You don’t need to be Sherlock to catch these idiotic criminals
Alf Garnett, the bigoted bard of Wapping in till Death Us Do Part, would have something to say about it: ‘Bleeding foreign criminals, coming over here and robbing us. that’s a British criminal’s job, that is!’
and even the coppers in The Brighton Police (ItV) were having a hard time biting their tongues as they rounded up a gang of Kosovan albanian drug dealers.
after battering down the triple-bolted door of a seedy den and seizing wads of cash the size of breezeblocks, one policeman gestured with contempt at the suspect in handcuffs. ‘He said he’s come over here on a lorry,’ he muttered, ‘and I don’t imagine he was the one driving it.’
But you can’t blame the albanians. they’re only doing the crimes that British toe-rags are too lazy or thick to commit.
We saw a couple of local lads in action. they barged into a bookie’s waving an air pistol, with stockings over their faces, demanding the contents of the till. their technique wasn’t exactly polished — they didn’t even have gloves on to hide their fingerprints.
a couple of days later, they did it again, this time without nylon masks. Down at the police station, DS Julie Greenwood looked fed up with the blatant stupidity of it. taking a swig from a mug of tea emblazoned with the slogan More love less Paperwork, Julie predicted that now she knew what they looked like, the moronic robbers would be in the cells within a week.
It took less than that. a police helicopter flew over the estate where the duo were believed to live, and one of them came out of his house to stare at it.
He was nicked, and so was his mate when Julie spotted him from her car as he walked home. It wasn’t exactly Sherlock.
Back at the station, a kindly desk sergeant explained to one of the robbers how forensics could trace the stolen banknotes by their serial numbers. the slack-jawed crook said in disbelief: ‘they aren’t gonna be able to number the tenners, are they?’
no wonder european crime dramas are so much better than our home-grown ones. Our villains are clueless.
Because the investigations were so unglamorous, this was depressing and seedy stuff. On the voice-over, Philip Glenister did his best to imbue the police bodycam footage with drama, as he boomed: ‘Brighton... a city with two faces! Beneath the fun and glamour of this party city, there has always been a criminal underbelly.’ Don’t use long words like ‘underbelly’, Philip — the crooks won’t understand.
But it still made better viewing than Taxi Of Mum And Dad (C4), a one-off compilation of scenes shot inside cars, as parents gossiped and bickered with their teenage children.
It was all painfully overrehearsed, and punctuated with deafening bursts of pop music. the families had a playlist of tracks to sing along with, dancing in their seats as they pretended to be starring on Carpool Karaoke.
the hum of road noise made it difficult to hear the conversations, though that hardly mattered — teenagers don’t make great conversationalists.
every scenario was a set-up: one father was laying down the law about his daughter’s end-ofyear party, a couple were taking their son and his girlfriend for a baby scan, a mum was tearfully telling her gay 16-year-old how proud she was of him.
none of them forgot for a moment that they were wearing microphones. they were showing off and following a script. as a result, you’d hear more interesting chatter at the bus stop.