I was sceptical on hearing the BBC's latest foreign crime drama wasn't from chilly Scandinavia but Australia.

Surely when we think of Australia we think of fun: we think of beaches and sun, back-packers and mates, but when we think of foreign crime dramas we're thinking damp streets and bulky jumpers, frozen landscapes and grey skies.

So The Code (BBC4) had a lot of prejudice to unseat. Can Australian TV do sleek crime drama in such a sunny land and, more importantly, can it shake off the association of televisual jewels like Neighbours and Prisoner Cell Block H?

I was doubtful, thinking that if all else fails I can indulge in the typical pastime of Aussie TV: recognising the actors. We know that everyone from Neighbours was in Prisoner, who was in Home and Away, who was in Sons and Daughters, ad infinitum. Part of the fun is in recognising old faces, grappling for their name, then remembering the crazy storylines they were involved in. Wasn't he the one who married that girl, but it turned out she was a murderer, so he stole her dog but then the dog turned out to be his son?

Luckily, there was no need to resort to such nostalgic games as The Code was very enjoyable. And, as an added bonus, there was one famous Antipodean face: Zena the Warrior Princess - or Lucy Lawless - as one of the main characters.

The episode opened with violence. A car crashes in the outback and we witness it all in short, horrible bursts of footage and hear a girl screaming, 'run!'

Then the scene jumps to the government buildings in Canberra, where a politician and his blonde PR girl are plotting to humiliate a rival by leaking photos of him.

There are some more flashes to the car crash scene, with some disturbing images, and it's clear we're a thousand miles from Ramsay Street.

Clarence, who survived the crash, staggers to his teacher's house, unable to remember what happened or where his girlfriend, Shayna, is. He's covered in blood and manages to tell the teacher it's not his. She screams 'where's Shayna? Is it her blood?' but Clarence can't remember anything else.

Meanwhile, the journalist, who was given the compromising photos of the politician, learns of the crash and that the female passenger has not been found. He finds a video on Clarence's mobile which shows jumbled footage of the crash and deciphers the licence plate on the truck which hit them.

His autistic brother traces the number to a bio-tech company and hacks into their system to find out who they are and why they had a truck out on a deserted rural road. The company detect his snooping and send malware to his computer, which then spreads to his brother's online newspaper, crashing its site. Clearly, the company has something to hide.

This was an excellent story, with the crash in the outback having echoes of the awful Peter Falconio case, as well as being simply mysterious in its own right: who crashed into them and why? Was it deliberate? Why would this company target two teenagers out for a ride at night? And how will the plotting and scheming in the government offices link into the story?

I only had two minor quibbles: one was the portrayal of the autistic brother. Firstly, it's a cliche to have a computer hacker being autistic and the actor's mannerisms in portraying autism seemed very exaggerated. In his jerky, anguished movements, and the ducking of his head, he reminded me absurdly of Ricky Gervais playing Derek.

Secondly, the programme went completely overboard in its use of graphics. I first noticed this on Sherlock, when text began springing up on screen, then it started happening on every TV drama. The Code was doing it constantly. Whenever a character sat at a laptop or with a mobile, your TV screen was suddenly swarming with graphics scrolling, whizzing and blinking. It was largely unnecessary and perhaps hinted at what the show was maybe trying to avoid: being seen as small-fry. Here comes Australian TV trying to elbow its way into being taken seriously, so they're showing off their technical wizardry, not knowing this has been done to death already.

Relax, Australia. You don't need to show off. The Code is good enough.