When villains are this stupid, who needs crime-buster Vera!
ONe name hung silent and unspoken during the real-life police drama, Our Cops In The North (BBC1). even when a Land Rover Defender was stolen, none of detectives dared breathe the word ‘Vera’.
Land Rovers are synonymous with the scruffy lady crime-buster, played by Brenda Blethyn. So, too, are the Northumbrian moors and Newcastle backstreets which we saw patrolled by a force of 5,000 officers. But Vera is strictly ITV, and thus her existence in the crime canon was completely ignored.
Observational documentaries about the police — what you might call bluebottle-on-the-wall shows — usually focus on murders. This one tracked three investigations into lesser crimes, though ones that still left deep scars, physical and psychological.
The fictional crooks that Vera hunts are cunning, clever and masterful liars. It takes all her deductive wiles to find them.
But the villains on Detective Sergeant Andy Richardson’s patch were notable for their sheer thuggish stupidity. One motorbike thief hid in the attic when police smashed down his door. he was carrying a machete when they arrested him: he said he needed it for the gardening.
Another robber flew into a
rage when he was picked up at a cheap hotel.
he’d just checked in for the night, and he didn’t want to leave without getting his 50 quid refunded.
A third demanded an energy drink on arrival at the station. The desk sergeant offered to put a mug of coffee in the fridge for him. You could see the yob’s cogs whirring, as he tried to work out if this would taste the same as a can of Red Bull. Gradually, it dawned on him that the sarge was joking.
‘The longer an investigation goes on,’ DS Richardson said, ‘the less evidence I’m likely to get — unless they are really stupid. Which some of them are.’
Brought up in a deeply Christian family, the detective believed criminals were a breed apart. ‘You’ve got heaven and hell, there really isn’t much in between,’ he said. It’s a far cry from Vera’s philosophy that any one of us could be a murderer.
But he had a point. Michael, 70, who was robbed in his own home by men who threatened to slice his fingers off, was a gentle, kind man who hesitated to point out one attacker in an identity parade for fear of making a mistake.
The brutish gangsters had tattoos across their necks and faces, and eyes like pinpricks of evil. heaven and hell looked very different.
To Fred Sirieix, the maitre d’ from First Dates, heaven is a city restaurant that serves fresh local produce and hell is a tourist trap, where they ‘feed zem cheap and charge ze ’efty price’.
At least, I think he said ‘cheap’ but without subtitles, Limogesborn Fred’s english can be a challenge.
On his new series, Remarkable Places To Eat (BBC2), he was in Venice dining at a seafood restaurant down a side-street so small it didn’t even have its own canal. If you enjoy looking at congealing plates of pasta, artistically garnished with a small octopus, then perhaps you’ll be tuning in again. I won’t — an hour spent listening to restaurateurs whingeing about customers who don’t turn up is one hour too much.
Fred did share one culinary secret: ‘Risotto is just like a beautiful girl — they don’t need make-up.’
he reminded me of Swiss Toni from The Fast Show, the car dealer who believed everything in life could be compared to ‘ making love to a beautiful woman’. even risotto, apparently . . . which is nice.