DETECTIVE Sergeant Nancy Devlin is on the scent of a killer and needs to get him before he gets her.

The tension will be palpable when new police drama The Level, set in Brighton, starts on ITV tonight.

It is a tense six-part thriller with an all-star cast, including Noel Clarke, Downton Abbey’s Rob James-Collier and Amanda Burton.

The show is another coup for the city, after BBC cop drama Cuffs was filmed in the city and other parts of Sussex last year.

The cast and crew are insistent this is not your regular meat-and-potatoes police fare. Filmed in Brighton and Hove, The Level's makers use the cityscape to dramatic effect.

The ITV show gets its name from the Brighton park and is also a reference to being “on the level”. The show writer Gaby Chiappe (Vera, Lark Rise to Candleford) grew up in Brighton inspiring her to set the show in the region.

The story follows DS Devlin (Karla Crome). She is an exemplary police officer masking a double life, which forces her back to the East Sussex coast where she grew up. She was once close to shady business man and drugs trafficker, Frank Le Saux (Philip Glenister), and although now they are on opposite sides of the law, she does not hesitate to meet Frank when he calls her in the middle of the night.

But danger lurks and Frank is shot in front of Nancy - she is shot too and manages to escape. But she is forced to move back to Brighton to work on this investigation, risking exposing her and leaving her stalked by a killer intent on destroying her.

Laura Haddock, who plays Frank's daughter Hayley, said the city was perfect for the show. She said: “Brighton is fascinating. In the sun it’s lively, warm, buzzy and just a brilliant place to be.

“When it’s cold, windy, the middle of the night, you’re down on the pier and the wind is blowing, it’s quite scary. It had a spooky feeling down at the old pier in the middle of the night.”

Be sure not to miss international best-selling British crime fiction writer Peter James’s review of the show in tomorrow’s paper.

  • The Level begins on ITV today at 9pm.

FIVE THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR

The Level was filmed in and around Brighton. Here are five places to look out for in the new ITV show tonight:

1. The city’s shimmering seafront at night is prominent throughout The Level’s opening sequences including the Brighton Palace Pier, the bandstand and the now-dismantled Brighton Wheel.

2. A group of partying stags bump into a dejected police detective in Madeira Place heading off in the direction of the Brighton Wheel.

3. A woman is deliberately rammed over the edge of Telscombe Cliffs by a lorry.

4. The facade of Roedean School’s distinctive cream buildings appear through the windows of a modernist seafront mansion.

5. There is a shocking revelation in one of the historic seafront shelters in front of Hove beach huts, close to the King Alfred leisure centre.