Making an enjoyable programme from the scenario of a hapless, passed-over, middle-aged DC in suburban London who is despised by his colleagues, unhappily estranged from his wife, and lives in a b&b sounds like too tall an order for even the best TV creative types but remarkably this series manages it - in the EARLY episodes. This is largely because of Peter Davison but also because of the absence of most of the things that are a turn-off in modern detective TV.
ABSENT are: car chases; final-scene punch-ups; Eastenders-style, shouting misery in the storylines; angst-riden misery in the detective's home life; pseudo-liberal, PC, lay-it-on-thick diatribes on race, sex, and sexuality; youth-culture; youth-obsessed plots; mumbling, brain-dead 13-year-olds masquerading as actors; foul-language masquerading as literary brilliance; staring-morosely masquerading as acting.
PRESENT are: interesting storylines; interesting characters who do not speak in the argot of a 23-year-old TV executive; a nice balance of plot elements with amusing and thoughtful sub-plots smoothly integrated into the main plot; a pleasant, normal, non-alcoholic detective whose company we enjoy.
Davison is perfectly cast. He makes Davies likeable without being syrupy, disappointed without being morose, and thoughtful without being pseud; a sort of grown-up Steven Daker from A Very Peculiar Practice.
Sean Hughes is very good as Mod, the counterpointing, philosophical, unworldly friend. Rob Spendlove plays the hard-drinking, cynical but ultimately professional DI without lapsing into caricature.
BUT somewhere towards the end of series 2 things start to slide.
Richard Harris's scripts for the early stories are beautifully balanced tales with the drama, soliloquy, and humour welded together in a highly professional manner to give each episode a feeling of momentum, light & shade, varied pace, and a satisfying structure reminiscent of the early Suchet Poirots.
But later episodes suffer from his absence. Plots and guest characters become rather clichéd, the pace sometimes slow, the atmosphere more ugly, and humour laboured.
The sub-plot of Davies, his wife, the dog, and Mod paints itself into something of a dramatic cul-de-sac with seemingly no-one on the creative team able to give it direction and refashion it into something more sustainable. It is this, more than weakness in the main plots, that is the programme's undoing.
This is a feel-good programme for people of all ages who like to watch a good story, spend time with appealing main characters, get a more or less positive ending, and then go to bed happy: the sort of people that modern TV executives hate; and that is why it didn't last longer. The 23-year-olds are always looking for a way to kill off the things that normal people enjoy and the weakening of the scripting in the later episodes would be enough of an excuse. Even Davison's marvellous performance (which for me still keeps up the enjoyment to the end) evidently was not enough to save the day.
I'm sad it didn't last longer but at least by expiring before the diversity zealots got hold of it we were spared it getting the Midsomer treatment.
