‘Year of the Rabbit’ completes Matt Berry’s TV hat trick

English actor/comedian Matt Berry adds a third current series to his American TV resume with “Year of the Rabbit,” premiering Wednesday (10:30 p.m.) on IFC and already renewed for a second season.

The six-episode police comedy, set in 1887 Victorian-era London, features Berry as hard-drinking, mutton-chopped Detective Inspector Eli Rabbit, he of the missing eyebrow (the dog chewed it off on Christmas Eve) and dodgy heart — which inconveniently stops intermittently.

“Hopefully there’s something for most people to like — whether they like whodunits or larger-than-life ridiculous characters,” says Berry, 45. “It’s the kind of kind of police-procedural crime you would’ve found on the streets of 1880s England. People get beaten up, blackmailed, there are snipers.”

As the series opens, Rabbit is (reluctantly) paired with upper-crust neophyte Detective Sergeant Wilbur Straus (Freddie Fox) and Mabel Wisbech (Susan Wokoma), the adopted daughter of Rabbit’s boss who’s intent on becoming England’s first female detective. They eventually grow more cohesive as a unit while investigating some gory East End murders and being targeted by a secret organization (its chief, Lydia, is played by “Bodyguard” and “Line of Duty” star Keeley Hawes).

“Year of the Rabbit” follows on the heels of “Toast of London” — Berry’s BAFTA-winning comedy also airing on IFC (he plays vain London actor Steven Toast) — and “What We Do in the Shadows,” back for Season 2 April 15 on FX. The ensemble vampire comedy, created by Jemaine Clement and Oscar winner Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”), features Berry as English nobleman Laszlo Cravensworth, sharing a house in Staten Island with his fellow vampires (and one wannabe blood-sucker).

“[Eli] Rabbit is dialed back quite considerably from Steven Toast,” says Berry. “His mind is quite ordered in that way and there’s not much hysterics there. If you’re going to play comedy characters … they’ve got to be visible in some way. Anybody who takes themselves very seriously, if they’re pushed into a corner or embarrassed then that’s when they become loud and all those sorts of things.

“That’s what I’m interested in.”

Berry says he based “Year of the Rabbit,” in part, on “The Sweeney,” a ’70s-era British cop drama starring John Thaw and Dennis Waterman that focused on two members of the Metropolitan Police. “I wrote ‘Year of the Rabbit’ and came up with the idea and wanted to do something Victorian,” he says. “I wanted to do something like ‘The Sweeney’ but in Victorian times, sort of a prequel to the 1970s British cop shows.”

To get the show’s gritty feel, its outdoor street scenes were shot in Luton, located about 30 miles northwest of London. “It’s an old Victorian set of streets which are unaltered,” Berry says. “You can point a camera in any direction and you won’t see anything modern.”

Berry, who’s also a musician (he wrote the short musical interludes that pepper each episode of “Toast of London”), also wrote some music for “Year of the Rabbit.” “It’s incredibly important to me,” he says of the music. “Unfortunately on ‘Rabbit’ I couldn’t do more, since I was shooting ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and couldn’t be in two places at once — but going forward I will have more time.”