This terrific series brings order to the chaos of urban crime
‘It’s the darker side of society that needs detectives,” said Det Supt Jon Chadwick. “Blind spots without witnesses. That’s where your murder comes from.” The Detectives: Murder on the
Street (BBC Two) dug deep into that darkness. The grimly fascinating documentary series followed two cases: the killing of 23-year-old Daniel Smith, a homeless man who was brutally beaten and set on fire in Manchester city centre; and the search for Bolton heroin addict Darren Mcminn, 48, who was missing and feared dead through foul play.
It was sobering to see how such people fall through the cracks of society. As a troubled teenager, Smith had fallen out with his mother, left home and spent seven years sleeping under railway arches and taking the potent, fiendishly addictive synthetic drug known as “Spice”. The homeless community gathered for an affecting vigil, erecting a home-made plaque in his memory.
A breakthrough came when the cops used CCTV footage to painstakingly retrace Smith’s movements – and spotted one of his so-called friends buying a bottle of lighter fuel, mere hours before Smith was set on fire. After a city-wide search, the suspect was found hiding in the loft of his mother’s house, which didn’t seem like the actions of an innocent man.
Meanwhile, Mcminn appeared to have been murdered due to his drug connections and dumped in a reservoir. DCI Sarah Jones, who headed the investigation, made an unfortunate faux pas when she talked about Mcminn in the past tense in front of his family, who were still holding out hope he’d be found alive. Her team’s canny use of mobile-phone data soon closed the net on his potential killer.
With hand-held cameras, moody music and clever editing, The Detectives was intimate and immersive. I found myself rooting for the police even more than I do with fictional crime dramas.
Chadwick was prone to heart-onsleeve outbursts – he threw down his pen and yelled “Oh, b----ks!” when suspects stonewalled with “No comment” – but was also philosophical, musing: “Murder is a random act. There’s very little planning in 95 per cent of murder. It’s a form of chaos.” This superlative series helps bring order to that chaos – or at least make some sense of it.
It’s been a while since I watched reliable ratings-grabber Doc Martin
(ITV) but this gentle fish-out-of-water drama is so reassuringly formulaic, it’s easy to dip back in. It was like receiving a warm hug from an old friend.
Eight series in, each episode still revolves around three locals with mysterious ailments which the titular GP (played by expressive-eyebrowed Martin Clunes) cures before the end credits roll. There are soapy sub-plots for the lovably hapless Cornish villagers. There’s usually a comedy dog, possibly borrowed from chef Rick Stein in nearby Padstow.
Dr Martin Ellingham (useless but pleasing piece of TV trivia: his surname is an anagram of series creator Dominic Minghella’s) hadn’t improved his brusque bedside manner since I last tuned in. When a sevenyear-old patient sweetly asked: “Am I going to die?”, the deadpan Doc replied: “Yes, you are. Everybody dies. But not today.” How reassuring.
The curmudgeonly medic suspected that recovering alcoholic Ken Hollister (Clive Russell), the landlord of the local hostelry The Crab & Lobster, had hit the bottle again. When Ken collapsed while changing a beer barrel, Martin took one look at the rat-infested pub cellar and diagnosed leptospirosis. Or was it leprosy?
The ever-excellent Eileen Atkins is often underused as Aunt Ruth but here she was given some proper acting to do. When B& B guest John Rahmanzai (Art Malik) arrived to scatter his father’s ashes on a picturesque Portwenn clifftop, he discovered that Ruth knew the deceased rather better than she let on. Naturally, Martin ended up saving the Rahmanzai’s life with a length of tubing and a plastic water bottle.
Meanwhile, Martin and longsuffering wife Louisa (the underrated Caroline Catz) sought a nursery for their invisible toddler James Henry. The proverb says children should be seen and not heard but this was the opposite: James was much discussed but never glimpsed.
When Louisa worried whether their son was having a happy childhood, Martin told her: “He spent 10 minutes yesterday smiling at a spoon. I took it off him in the end.” British parenting at its best.