Chris Murray teases Van der Valk Series 3: ‘The challenge is, how do we keep topping what we’ve already done?’

The second series of Van der Valk has come to a close; Marc Warren’s Dutch detective returned to his sailboat home, another murder solved.

But the third series has already been filmed, and post-production is already underway – meaning that when NationalWorld’s Alex Moreland spoke to Van der Valk showrunner Chris Murray earlier this month, he was able to share a few exclusive details about the upcoming series.

Murray explained what fans can expect to see in Van der Valk’s love life, where in Amsterdam the series will go next, and which themes each episode will touch on…

Is there much you can tell us about Van der Valk Series 3?

Well, it’s set in Amsterdam!

Big surprise!

The romantic arc that Van der Valk has in Series 2 ends in Series 2 – or something ends in Series 2 – but that romance continues in Series 3 in a slightly different form. His personal journey continues, I think that’s probably the headline. But then otherwise, you know, there are three entirely independent stories again.

Do you have much sense of what those are yet? Do you know the worlds of Amsterdam that each case is set in, or is it still too early to say yet?

Oh no, we’ve shot it! It’s [been filmed], I’m going out the week after next for some post-production stuff. I can tell you about that.

Oh, that’s great!

Now, let me remember! The first story is set in the world of free running. It’s quite a visual world. The second story is a cold case – because we hadn’t done a cold case before – it’s a case Van der Valk worked on 15 years ago. The third one has a little whiff of the supernatural to, which… just because we’re into that! [laughs]

In terms of the where we go, what’s interesting about that is that we have a fantastic locations team, and we have a conscious desire to keep showing Amsterdam. I mean, it looks brilliant anyway, it’s an absolute gift for filming – although we do sometimes get out, we’ll go to the Hague [which then] doubles as Amsterdam. Partly because that’s sometimes the logistics: to film, for example, on the canal belt too often is a problem. On the one hand, we want our hit of canals and bikes, but from a filming perspective, it’s really impractical, so we have to balance it with different kinds of locations in different parts of the town that are easier to access.

And that’s nice – I welcome that, you know, being able to go to an area we haven’t been to before. Let’s show a slightly more diverse community in Amsterdam that we haven’t seen before, or let’s tell a story set in a world we haven’t seen before. That’s a conscious thing we work on – there’s so much filming in Amsterdam now that finding good new locations is an increasing challenge.

But that’s part of the fun for the locations department – how do we keep topping what we’ve already done? How do we make sure we’re not repeating ourselves? So far, I think we’ve succeeded in that.

Van der Valk Series 2 is available to watch now on ITV Hub. You can read the first half of our exclusive interview with Van der Valk showrunner Chris Murray here.