Several irons in the fire
REMEMBER that American crime show CSI, when a gaggle of impossibly good-looking crime-busters cracked difficult cases each week after glancing casually into a microscope? It was a cool but ridiculously glamourised version of the serious work of forensics.
Thankfully we have FORENSICS: THE REAL CSI (BBC2, 9pm), now in its third series and showing us how painstaking the real work is of investigators whose job it is to find those minute pieces of evidence that can help catch culprits.
The series takes a rounded view of crime, too, showing us both the terrible toll on victims and how some cases can’t be tied up neatly with a bow like in TV drama.
In tonight’s penultimate episode cameras followWest Midlands Police and fire experts as they struggle to figure out what caused a blaze at a Birmingham factory.
Fire investigator Luke Beckett opens the case immediately to gather vital information before it’s destroyed, but comes up emptyhanded.When Luke can find no obvious reason for the fire, he begins to wonder if it was arson or something equally sinister.
Then he has a stroke of luck – the building’s CCTV room escaped the fire and valuable footage from the security cameras may hold the answer. It’s a fascinating series that scratches that true crime itch.
Funny comedies are rarer than tasty vegan cheese.Trust me, I speak from experience.
So colour me delighted to have stumbled across COLIN FROM ACCOUNTS (BBC2, 10pm). This adorable modern rom-com, with emphasis on the com, was written by and stars real-life Aussie spouses Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who play on-off couple Gordon and Ashley.
He’s the owner of a struggling craft brewery and she’s a medical student with an absurdly light workload, which one assumes is TV fiction designed to leave Ashley available for lots of meet-cutes with Gordon.
In tonight’s finale the pair have broken up and are looking for a new home for Colin, the disabled dog that brought them together after Ashley distracted Gordon and he ran over the wandering canine. Having adopted the pooch and shared his care, neither has the free time to bring up Colin alone.
Cue a series of unfortunate attempts to rehome him and another scene-stealing turn from Helen Thomson as Ashley’s self-obsessed mother Lynelle.
The show’s vibe is similar to Catastrophe, Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s dark rom-com of a few years back, in the best way.
However, the bad news is that because Brammall and Dyer now live in LA, any second series is currently on hold due to the writers’ strike, so series one of this charming shaggy dog tale will have to do for now.