'Hidden Assets' Gearing Up For Season 3 in 2025

The Acorn TV series Hidden Assets is one of those crime shows that has flown under the radar in America, and with good reason. The Irish-Belgian RTE co-production series stands out as odd among the cozy crime drama world's offerings. There's no small village; everyone is a law enforcement professional, and the bad guys sometimes get away with it. Moreover, it focuses on a niche corner of law enforcement that most people don't realize exists: the Criminal Assets Bureau, known as Ireland's CAB. Their job is to hunt down the assets of those who commit crimes to help pay for justice; however, their cases sometimes lead them to active terrorist criminal plots in progress.

Part of the show's conceit comes from Europe being a confederate of countries whose law enforcement bureaus sometimes are forced to work together and the reality that most criminals in the U.K. and Ireland tend to stash ill-gotten gains on the far side of the Chunnel, where other country's banks are less inclined to ask questions before laundering. Seasons 1 and 2 began in Ireland and then branched out to Belgium, as the Garda's CAB tracked the goods to active cases in the Belgian Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU).

Season 1 started as a spinoff of another show in the RTE/Acorn TV portfolio, 2017's one-and-done series Acceptable Risk. It brought back supporting cast member Angeline Ball (Mr Selfridge), reprising her role as DS Emer Berry. In Season 1, Berry winds up tracking James Melnick (Charlie Carrick) to Belgium, where she teams up with CTU's Christian De Jong (Wouter Hendrickx). However, Ball exited after one season and was replaced by Nora Jane Noone (The Ipcress File) as DS Claire Wallace. Wallace's first case winds up leading to James' wife, Bibi Melnick (Simone Kirby), also operating in Belgium; Wallace then meets De Jong, and the two work to solve the case once and for all.