Forget Peter Kay. It’s more fun to car share with Miriam Margolyes

Two days after the return of Peter Kay’s sitcom-with-seatbelts, Car Share, the BBC decides it’s the perfect time to launch another on-the-road comedy starring a bickering couple stuck behind the wheel.

As a piece of scheduling incompetence, it’s impressive. But I don’t suppose Frog Stone, the writer and co-star of Bucket (BBC4), is applauding. She must feel like a Robin Reliant being bullied off the road by Peter Kay’s juggernaut.

The real pity is that Bucket is a much funnier show. It has bawdy jokes, a proper plot and a motherdaughter relationship that isn’t so much dysfunctional as dangerously unhinged.

Best of all, it stars Miriam Margolyes at her raucous, foulmouthed best. She plays Mim, a bullying, neglectful mum of 70 who blackmails her only child Fran (played by Frog) into chauffeuring her round the country as she ticks off goals on a bucket list.

Mim is a horror. In the opening scene she breaks wind midsentence while munching on a hard-boiled egg. Anyone who saw Margolyes in the retirement documentary The Real Marigold Hotel knows the actress is capable of even worse. It certainly makes for a convincing performance.

Mother and daughter are careering around in Mim’s ancient BMw held together with bumper stickers, most of them obscene. The interior is piled high with plastic tat and discarded wrappers — a hoarder’s home on wheels.

If Fran was as coarse as her mother, this would just be crass. what makes it believable and sometimes poignant is the difference between the women — Fran is terrified of other people, filled with self-doubt and still a virgin at 35.

That is beyond Mim’s comprehension. A vigorous advocate of free love all her life, she can only think of one possible reason why her daughter has never slept with a man, and she explains her theory crudely and often. ‘Mum!’ cringes Fran, ‘I’m not gay . . .’

Mim claims to be dying from cancer, though she’s vague on the details and this might turn out to be another of her brutal manipulation techniques. Either way, she’s determined to live life with her foot on the pedal, even if she does leave a trail of crashes in her wake.

The script lacks a little confidence in places, especially when Mim and Fran get out of the car. But if the Beeb gives it a chance, this show will gather pace.

one thing’s for sure. You won’t see Peter Kay ‘doing a Mim’ on Car Share, roaring down a dual carriageway with his torso poking through the sunroof — shouting: ‘Carpe bloody diem!’ and lifting up his cardie.

Traffic offences don’t concern the coppers featured in a new documentary series, The Detectives: Inside the Major Crimes Team (ITV). The film crew embedded with this Lancashire squad tracked them as they investigated an allegation of date rape, and a knife murder by the seaside.

The unit’s efficiency and speed was impressive. These officers acted as though they’d seen everything before and were constantly ahead of their suspects. There was no headscratching, just action.

But both the cases shown lacked any interest or excitement. The dead man in Blackpool was a Polish drug-user, killed in a row with his dealer, who was also East European.

The rape was an encounter between strangers who hooked up on a seedy social media app.

This was about as edifying as watching a team of cleaners tackling the public toilets.

It’s a job that needs doing, but few people really want to see it being done.