Fridge find shows our mac-clad detective is cooler than he looks

ColIn Sutton’s first line in Manhunt: The Night Stalker (ITV) was a broad hint that he is not a conventional television detective. ‘I’m looking for dishwasher salt,’ he said, hunting through his kitchen cupboard.

In The Sweeney they’d have drawn weapons and kicked down the kitchen cupboard.

There were other hints too, as we were reintroduced to the detective chief inspector who first appeared in the 2019 drama Manhunt.

For a start, he talks like a John Major impersonator.

He appears to be the only officer who still wears a Mackintosh raincoat, which was standard issue in the 1970s world of endeavour.

He never gets excited and he never takes offence. he seems to hover about in the background until he spots something. With his thick horn-rimmed spectacles, he looks like the manager of a suburban bank who suspects there’s a shortfall in the accounts.

Sutton — played by Martin clunes — is based on a real detective, now retired. So real he appeared in person later in the evening on fred And rose West: reopened, as a key member of Sir Trevor McDonald’s investigating team. clunes first played him in Manhunt, an account of the way Sutton caught levi Bellfield, the murderer of three young women, including Millie Dowler.

Now, in the first of four episodes of this new series, it’s 2009 and Sutton is given what appears to be an impossible job: to conduct yet another review of the investigation into the so-called night Stalker, a serial burglar and rapist who has been attacking elderly women in south london since 1992.

Officers who’ve been leading the 17-year investigation are clearly suspicious of Sutton, but in the finest traditions of police drama he gets a lucky break. Visiting the scene of a burglary that was not at first thought to be the work of the night Stalker, he discovers that the intruder has helped himself to some orange juice from the fridge.

Not only is there a DNA match to previous attacks, but a rear view of the stalker is picked up on nearby security cameras.

At the end of the episode, colin suggests a change in the way the case is being managed. not the most exciting cliffhanger known to detective drama, but I still want to know what happens next.

Professor Sir Stephen hawking was not just a great physicist, but also a media superstar. yet Hawking: Can You Hear Me? (Sky Documentaries) reveals that he wasn’t a particularly good husband or father.

‘Everything had to be sacrificed to the worship of the goddess of physics,’ said his first wife, Jane, who talked at length about the difficulties of their life together. She spoke remarkably frankly — no bitterness, merely resignation. except perhaps when she recalled the words of her motherin-law: ‘We’ve never liked you. you don’t fit into our family.’

Help for Jane arrived in the shape of Jonathan hellyer Jones, a widower and choirmaster at Jane’s church. At first, he and Jane were close companions — he helped care for Stephen — until the inevitable happened: ‘I was always resisting the idea of falling in love, and I think gradually I resisted a little less.’

As recalled by the couple’s children, the family eventually broke up on christmas Day. There were presents in the morning, and then Professor hawking left to live with his nurse. ‘I still think it was unnecessarily brutal,’ said his daughter, lucy.

Part of hawking’s appeal as a broadcaster was the compelling rhythm of his computergenerated voice. he started using that machine after his secretary spotted it on Tomorrow’s World. remember that next time somebody complains that television is a waste of time.