A dull copper driving a 15-year-old Skoda . . . Starsky & Hutch it ain’t

Like a corporate Starsky and Hutch, Supt Roy Grace and his sergeant sat on the beach after solving their latest mystery, quaffing beer and cracking puns. They were celebrating the departure of a treacherous colleague, the Met’s Cassian Pewe. He lost his taste for South Coast policing after nearly plunging over a cliff in a caravan, in Grace (iTV).

‘Being here was pushing him over the edge,’ chortled the Super (John Simm). His dutiful sidekick, DS Glen Branson (Richie Campbell) laughed till he nearly dropped his bag of chips.

This was Grace and Branson letting their hair down — still tightly buttoned into suit, collar and tie. The sarge even wears a waistcoat.

That’s the biggest problem with Grace, and almost every police series today. There’s no glamour.

Half a century ago, the knitwear, leather jackets and hairstyles sported by detectives ken Hutchinson and Dave Starsky defined what it meant to be male in the 1970s — when bubble perms were macho. Bay City’s finest drove a red Gran Torino with a flash of white lightning. Supt Roy Grace drives a 15-year-old Skoda.

And while Starsky & Hutch cruised the streets or talked jive with their informant Huggy Bear in his bar, our Brighton policeman spends most of his day at his desk, answering the phone and checking files on his computer.

Though Grace is meant to be a maverick, he can’t go beating up drug dealers or diving into swimming pools with movie starlets. His idea of bending the rules is to seek advice from a psychic who lives in a retirement bungalow.

if he gets caught by his boss, Assistant Chief Constable Vosper (Rakie Ayola), she metes out a thin-lipped scolding like a nursery teacher telling off a four-year-old for making a mess.

Compare the two eras, 1970s and today, and you reach the inevitable conclusion that all the fun has been squeezed out of the 21st century.

The original Grace novels by Peter James feature the unrepentant prejudices of DS Norman Potting, a man who made Jim Davidson look politically correct.

Cleaned up for iTV, Potting’s sulphurous jokes aren’t so much off-colour as faintly magnolia, just a shade less than innocent. When he refers to breast implants as ‘silicon norks’ and ‘the devil’s dumplings’, that’s enough to send his fellow officers into fits of the vapours.

Craig Parkinson, as the pottymouthed Potting, is the best thing about this dour serial. He stole the show with a scene backstage at a nightclub, where he revealed a surprising knowledge of Dusty Springfield’s greatest hits.

His interrogation of a drag performer in a sequined blue dress supplied a rare moment of glamour.

There’s no glamour in Beck (BBC4), the subtitled Swedish police thriller back for an eighth season, but we don’t expect that from the Scandinavians.

Martin Beck (Peter Haber) is also confined to his desk, though that’s to be expected. He’s recovering from a brain tumour op and his grandson is now old enough to be a trainee copper.

No wonder Martin’s daughter inger (Rebecka Hemse) has rented an allotment for him. At his age, a row of radishes ought to be enough excitement.

He’s still being waylaid by his neighbour (ingvar Hirdwall) who regales him with shaggy dog stories — this time, about drug-induced hallucinations in the Amazon.

The murder investigation was securely plotted and somewhat mechanical, as Beck’s always are. More intriguing are the simmering office romances and the return of Norwegian actor kristofer Hivju, as rumbustious detective Steinar Hovland.

Steinar is the kind of policeman who visits a prison just to bellow at old foes through the gates. You get the feeling he’d have enjoyed the 1970s.