Law and Order: UK

British police shows are almost without exception rubbish. They're soapy, melodramatic, unrealistic, slow paced and humourless - everything, basically, that US import Law and Order and its spin offs are not. Except now one of the Law and Order spin offs is British. How 'bout that.

The tried and tested formula has remarkably remained pretty much intact: we start out with two matey cops investigating crime in grimy London locales, before they pass the case on to a prim and be-wigged pair of prosecutors. The fat and fluff of your usual ITV crime drama has been ruthlessly pared away, leaving a lean core of procedural law and underplayed acting. Of course, at the moment it's easy to worry that this is only because the first episode directly ripped off the plot of an existing American episode. Only when the writers are forced to stand on their own two feet will we really know how much they've shed the bad habits of British TV.

Then again, that may all be a moot point. As the credits began to roll (really not sure about that theme tune), my most prominent thought was, “This is too good for us.” Nobody in the UK will watch this show. We may not even get to the end of the first season before it's been shuffled to ITV2, and then ITV will begin the tortuous process of washing their hands of the whole thing.