Mayday

Screened over five days and likened to 'The Killing' (but by whom, we don't know) this had us thinking it was 'Midsomer Murders' at first.  Every drama featuring an English village tradition has this curse, thanks to ITV....  The May Queen goes missing on her way to the parade and secrets start popping up like weeds after rain.  This takes care to set up suspects from the start: one character chain-smokes and keeps away from his wife; another - a cop - has blood on his clothes and gets tetchy when his wife finds him having a shower and yet a third hides something in a bag in a cupboard and locks it up.  As usual, a dog makes a find in the woods, but it's a sort of Well Dressing in the woods rather than a body.  And as usual all the men seem to know that the supposedly innocent 14-year-old Hattie Sutton is anything but.

It's a bit odd that the men of the village form a search party and head straight to the woods, rather than following her supposed route by bicycle through the village, and unaccompanied by any police.  There are a number of characters, whose relationships aren't yet clear (who's the guy on the screen?) so the next-day screenings are a good idea.

So far this feels like an uneasy mix of 'Midsomer' and Jez Butterworth's play of mythic truths 'Jerusalem'.  We hope it coalesces into something more gripping than a standard whodunnit.

Titanic (Drownton on Sea)

All credit to Alison Graham of the Radio Times for the moniker above.  The fact that the whole of this drama is slightly longer than the actual sinking, yet crams in the design, building, negotiations, pre-voyage, voyage, iceberg and sinking, and no doubt some of the aftermath, says it all.  Episode one dashed through the mechanics of the wrecking with all attention on Fellowes's favourite preoccupation: class divisions.  Like Downton, this has romance, frills, grand settings and painfully obvious dialogue.  Unlike Downton, we know the ending, but at least this is actually covering the same events in each episode, rather than just feeling like watching the same episode over and over.

The stars were out when the iceberg loomed up ahead, and the stars were out queuing for the lifeboats, having flocked to the wildly successful Downton creator's new show.  There can't be a single UK agent whose coffers are empty of 'Titanic' money with the huge cast, who play their roles with varying success (Celia Imrie, where are you supposed to be from?!)  Undeniably a Titanorak's wet or worst dream, depending on which geek feature appeals, but for the general public, this goes nowhere an old British film, a big-budget but dismally cliched Cameron effort and a real ship with a couple of thousand souls hasn't gone before.  Maybe we should let it rest in its watery grave now?