Director: Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre
DCI Ellis doesn't get the cases anyone wants. She gets the ones nobody else could close, and the job keeps sending her from station to station to fix what local police forces couldn't.
What is Ellis about?
Every time an investigation stalls, DCI Ellis and her partner DS Harper are dropped into an unfamiliar police station to take over. The local officers rarely welcome the intrusion; some resent being shown up, others simply distrust an outsider parachuted in on short notice. Ellis has to read a room fast — the internal politics of a station, the grudges between colleagues, the shortcuts that got a case stuck — while also chasing down whoever actually committed the crime. Across a run of standalone cases the series builds a quieter throughline about Ellis herself: why she keeps taking these thankless postings, and what it costs her to be the person always sent in to clean up someone else's mess. The result plays like a classic case-of-the-week procedural with a sharper focus on institutional friction than most shows in its genre.
Cast & crew
Sharon D. Clarke leads as DCI Ellis, giving the character a weary, unshowy authority that carries scenes where she has to win over rooms full of skeptical officers. Andrew Gower plays DS Harper, her steady partner through each new posting, and Alison Harding rounds out a supporting cast of shifting local police colleagues who change from case to case.
Context & significance
Ellis premiered in 2024 as a British procedural built around a simple but effective structural hook: a different police station, a different set of local dynamics, every case. That format lets the show sidestep the fatigue of a single fixed precinct and instead explore how the same detective adapts — or doesn't — to new environments each time. Its UK-US co-production roots gave it a slightly wider release than a typical regional crime drama, and critics responded well to Clarke's central performance.
Where & how to watch
Ellis is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login, with a Farsi-friendly interface and both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles for viewers who prefer to follow the investigations in their own language. Just sign in and start watching.