These Ulster bobbies would have Supt Ted Hastings lost for words!
Holy St Christopher! Is there a police force anywhere in the world with more colourful language than the coppers of Northern Ireland?
line of Duty fans thrilled to the pungent Belfast phrases of Superintendent Ted Hastings, forever ‘sucking diesel’ with ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey’.
But in the fictional town of Port Devine on the Ulster coast, the constables of Hope Street (BBC1) make Ted’s dialogue sound drier than the annual general meeting of the Ballykelly Teetotallers Society.
Inspector Finn o’Hare (Ciaran McMenamin) refers to any suspect he dislikes as ‘an absolute ganch’.
His sergeant, Marlene Pettigrew (Kerri Quinn), translates for a newcomer: ‘Ganch is not a swear word, but it’s not a term of endearment either.’
Sgt Marlene has a low opinion of the townsfolk, too. When a man turns up at the station to reclaim his wallet, she mutters: ‘Sounds like he had a crush on the girl who robbed him. Sadly, it’s not odd for these parts.’
Queen of Port Devine, and the owner of the sharpest tongue of all, is the woman they call ‘the Stasi’ — Concepta o’Hare, the inspector’s mother (Brid Brennan).
Concepta is appalled at the discovery of a brothel on the outskirts. ‘Imagine Peggy Wilson’s place a house of ill repute,’ she wails. ‘If she was still alive, she’d die of shame.’
‘Will you catch yourself on?’ sighs her son, meaning, ‘Mother, just listen to yourself’.
The lively script gives this comedy-drama an edge that the plot doesn’t quite supply. The bobbies of Hope Street have their sleepy world disrupted by the arrival of a detective from England, DC leila Hussain (Amara Karan), and they don’t know what to make of her.
Finn fancies her. Marlene feels threatened. The trainee, bumbling PC Callum McCarthy (Niall Wright), just wants to please her, but he’s like that with everyone.
DC leila has been sent to the rural north to lie low, after helping to break an organised crime ring. But wouldn’t you know it, she stumbles on more international people traffickers in Port Devine.
Hope Street wants to be one of the big boys, investigating major crime — a bit like PC Callum himself. But thanks to the afternoon slot, it also has to be soapy and clownish. one character gets stuck on railings, while another escapes arrest when a car starts rolling down a hill.
It’s been airing every day since Monday and I’m starting to get hooked. Though it’s the language I love, not the crime-busting.
There’s not a line worth repeating on Katie Price’s Mucky Mansion (C4), which follows the former glamour model as she and a lone builder called Steve renovate her semi-derelict house in Sussex.
For a woman who gives the impression of saying the first thing that comes into her head, Katie is exceptionally guarded.
She says nothing about the debris of her broken marriages, the drink and drugs scandals or her financial predicament. She seems to be talking with emotion, but it’s just vacuous chatter: ‘oMG, I love this, this is gonna be so great, the kids will love it so much.’
It’s as forced and scripted as her moments of klutziness, when she steers a dumper truck into a bush or tangles with an out-ofcontrol pneumatic drill. The camera constantly probes for sights to set viewers sniggering, and Katie is happy to oblige.
She has two shipping containers in a field, piled high with furniture, pictures, clothes and stuff from a succession of houses. It’s a miserable metaphor for a life in late-stage disintegration.