It has been quite some time since I’ve been able to bear watching UK crime drama. All right, I do cheat occasionally with series like the one featuring the delightfully grumpy, chain-smoking Cormoran Strike, but on the whole I can’t stand the mix of predictability and implausibility: all the goodies will be female and/or ethnic; the murderer will always be white, middle class and male; no one ever gets arrested for misgendering someone on Twitter because in the parallel universe of cop TV the police still actually think it’s their job to solve crimes.
So, your options are either to watch classic episodes of The Sweeney or to find a cop series from one of those countries where the old values still prevail. India, for example. Here – well, certainly in the Punjab, setting for Netflix’s Kohrra – you won’t find a rainbow-painted patrol car anywhere in sight. Instead, they trundle around in manly khaki-coloured Jeeps, dress in smart khaki uniforms, help themselves to bottles of whisky from behind the bar of dodgy clubs they’re investigating and encourage witnesses to be more helpful during interrogation by squeezing them hard on the testicles.
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