The PC who never arrests anyone? Sounds familiar

AT LAST a realistic TV police series, in which the hero, if he is a hero, barely does any actual policing at all. He is pretty much the paramilitary social worker I have long said the police have become.

In The Responder, which is written by an ex-officer, Martin Freeman, pictured left, plays a constable who goes to therapy, takes orders from a drug dealer, loses his temper during a neighbour dispute – and actually pilfers the pathetic belongings of a dead old lady. He also drives about in his car a lot and has sociological conversations with drug-abusing low-lifes. He searches them a lot but has (so far) not actually arrested one.

Who can blame him? They’d only be let off. During his free time he annoys his wife and crudely rewrites up the bedtime stories he reads to his tiny daughter. He can barely open his mouth without emitting a four-letter word.

He reacts to trouble when it is far too late to help, prevents nothing, stands (as far as I can see) for no moral order or idea of right and wrong.

He is so naive he gives money to a heroin abuser to buy a train ticket, which of course she spends on drugs.

So now we know why in England and Wales between April 2020 and April 2021 there were 268,000 recorded burglaries – of which only 14,000 were solved while 243,000 cases were abandoned.