Baghdad Central: Gritty wartime noir, a missing daughter - and lots of tea

Baghdad, 2003, the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. About as intriguing a backdrop for a detective noir as you could ask for, with the obvious exception of Detective Pikachu. In Baghdad Central, then, we are up to our necks in intrigue.

It’s an utterly gripping setting, a bold bit of story craft that pays off in spades. US airstrikes are pummelling the city, armoured Humvees roar through it, and Muhsin al-Khafaji, an Iraqi ex-policeman, is looking for his missing daughter. Shades of Liam Neeson in Taken, although al-Khafaji’s specialist skills seem largely to extend to extreme patience at American checkpoints. 

Bad hardly seems to do these antagonists justice — though all hope of any reasonable justice is blown to smithereens in the first wave of airstrikes. What we know at once is that al-Khafaji’s estranged daughter acted as part of a network of interpreters for the foreign troops and has now gone missing. She and her fellow translators signed up to work with knights in shining camo-armour — indications are that their fate is much darker.

I am already besotted with al-Khafaji, played with Magnum PI moustachioed excellence (for at least half the first episode, anyway, before US soldiers “send his moustache back to America” in a gritty torture scene) by Waleed Zuaiter. He wears a stylish leather jacket, smokes American cigarettes and reads poetry to his other daughter, who is gentle and frail. He’s the last cowboy in this town, trampled beneath the American boot.