Scott and Bailey

AKA Cagney and Lacey: UK

This was always going to be a prime-time cop show and not quality original drama, so we've no business posting about it, but dammit we like Lesley Sharp and all she's had to do so far in 'The Shadow Line' is look unhealthily thin and baffled.  (Mrs Bede may have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but she's probably also confused by the overblown plot.)

Last night's opener was pretty much as expected: case which coincidentally mirrored Cagney's, sorry, Bailey's muddled private life which she thus has insight enough to solve.  Hurrah!  Clunky, but harmless.  The main TWNH, though, is that we are expected to believe that our competent cop has been seeing someone for two years without realising he was married with kids and lived, when not in his bachelor pad, in a posh family home.  Villains had better hope that Scott is on leave or off sick, so they can get away with it.

OK, the last episode has now aired, and Ali stuck with this one.  Undeniably there were some good scenes and sharp dialogue.  With a bit more thought about developing peripheral characters, i.e. all the men in the series, and as much care given to the weekly crime(s) as to the soapy personal lives of the leads, it could be great.  Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp make good screen buddies, if you can get over the former being, in the words of her boss, “one of the best young detectives I’ve ever seen” while falling for Mr Rotten twice (Rupert Graves, the current go-to for nasty cads).  Said Mr Rotten – who must have an equally daft wife – tried to have Bailey killed in order to save his career, so he was obviously (a) Evil Incarnate and (b) taking more of a risk having her murdered than trusting her not to talk?

You also have to get over Scott, supposedly the more stable of the pair, preaching to Bailey about being a dupe and then putting her husband in the same position by continuing an affair with a colleague.  This is after she’s made a miraculous recovery from being stabbed by her dead friend’s brother last week.  A couple of months were meant to have gone by, admittedly, but as always in telly-land, there were no physical reminders at all.  She’s human, yes, and she nearly died, and her erstwhile lover is leaving town but... wouldn’t she either leave her hubby or make a go of her marriage?

Having kept their MIT jobs by the proverbial skin of their teeth, the end of the series brought everything pretty much back to where it was at the start, so in the next series they can behave like this one never happened....