Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Professor T’ On PBS, About A Criminology Professor With OCD Who Helps The Cambridge Police

The trope of the “obsessive detective” takes on different forms, whether it’s Sherlock Holmes or Adrian Monk or even Gregory House. Some, like Monk, may actually have OCD, but the others have something about them that make them observe cases in ways that others can’t. Into that group comes Professor Jasper Tempest, nicknamed Professor T by his students. Read on for more.

PROFESSOR T: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In Cambridge, England, a female college student rides her bike back to her dorm while fireworks go off. She goes into the dark and quiet dorm common areas and into the bathroom. She sees a masked man and thinks it’s part of the party the criminology students are holding. But the man grabs her, drags her into a stall, and starts to rape her.

The Gist: We then see Jasper Tempest (Ben Miller) getting ready to go to work in the morning. To say he’s fastidious is an understatement; he starts the day by putting on surgical gloves, then makes sure everything is done to his precise expectations.

On his way to work, where he’s considered the University of Cambridge’s top criminology instructor, he spies the overgrown shell of the house where he grew up. He flashes back to his childhood, where his parents are heard yelling at each other while he brooded on a swing. He’s shocked by the For Sale sign out front. He finds out later from his mother Adelaide (Frances de la Tour) that she put the house up, even though she needs his permission first. He tells her he intends on moving in, despite the negative energy in the place.

As DCS Lisa Donckers (Emma Naomi) and her partner Dan Winters (Barney White) investigate, there’s something about the MO of the perpetrator that seems familiar to her. She decides to go to her old criminology teacher, Professor T, to consult on the case. Tempest resists, saying “My interest in crime is purely academic, detective. I do not get my hands dirty.” But when Donckers later surprises him by bringing the victim, who isn’t remembering the attack, to him to see if he can bring some details out of her, he reluctantly agrees to help.

Donckers’ boss, Paul Rabbit (Andy Gathergood), doesn’t want anything to do with Professor T, but he’s also still mourning the death of his daughter via a hit-and-run driver; the case may hit too close to home for him. But his boss, Christina Brand (Juliet Aubrey) knows Tempest well, and we see how well when Professor T remembers their more romantic moments as he stands on the roof of the building where his office is.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s not going to be a surprise to say that Professor T gives off strong Monk vibes. Despite the presence of comedic actors like Miller, it certainly takes itself more seriously than Monk did.

Our Take: Professor T is a British remake of a Belgian series (which was also remade in Germany) whose three seasons actually aired on PBS. When the first episode starts it’s hard to get past those comparisons to Monk, given how truly OCD Jasper Tempest is. But Miller is adept at making Tempest into a character that’s wholly different than Tony Shalhoub’s Adrian Monk, if only because Tempest isn’t just a man of routines. His teachings about forensics and criminology feed directly into the cases he’ll help Donckers and the Cambridge police solve.

Miller plays Tempest as a guy who seems inscrutable by his lack of expressiveness and his obsessive routines, but as soon as he passes his childhood home we know that there’s massive trauma behind that closed-off façade. And despite his officiousness, his previous relationship with Christina shows that there’s some warmth in there somewhere. What we hope as the case-of-the-week episodes go along is that his relationship with his mother and the trauma he suffered as a child is explored.

Writers Malin-Sarah Gozin and Matt Baker have given every one of the regular characters enough backstory to make us confident that the episodes won’t just be case-of-the-week. Rabbit is still suffering from his daughter’s death. Donckers and Winters are starting to make their professional relationship personal. And it seems that Christina still holds a bit of a candle for Tempest, and the feeling is mutual.

The question always is in series like this is if the writers can service these continuing storylines without giving the weekly mysteries the short end of the stick. The mystery from the first episode was solved via a bit of a writerly shortcut, but what led up to it didn’t feel cheap or unearned. If the mysteries are intriguing, the British version of Professor T will be a show worth watching.

Sex and Skin: None. The show first aired on ITV in England, so there is little chance that things will get beyond broadcast network-level sexy.

Parting Shot: We see a flashback of why Professor T’s house has such bad mojo, and the trauma he suffered when he was a kid.

Sleeper Star: Juliet Aubrey plays Christina Brand as a warm and supportive presence, something we usually don’t see from police bosses on British detective shows.

Most Pilot-y Line: For some reason, shots of Donckers typing in her report at work late at night are interspersed with scenes from another woman being attacked in the dorms.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Yes, Professor T doesn’t tread new ground. But the writing is solid and Miller and the rest of the cast do a good job of making the obsessive detective trope entertaining to watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Professor T On PBS.org