Not much cop | 7 May 2015

With Clocking Off, Shameless and State of Play among his credits, Paul Abbott is undoubtedly one of the most respected TV writers in Britain. Not even his biggest fans, though, could argue that he’s one of the subtlest. On the whole, whatever his characters are thinking, they’ll also be saying — and generally in a way that proves what no-nonsense salt-of-the-earth types they are. Nor do his dramas ever suffer from a shortage of incident, much of it pitched somewhere between the bracing and the lurid.

It’s an approach that Abbott evidently felt no need to change now that he’s writing a cop series. No Offence (Channel 4, Tuesday) began with DC Dinah Kowalska coming back in a taxi from a disappointing evening out with her boyfriend, who was on crutches. Having rejected his offer of a night together with the words, ‘I’d rather have a wank,’ she threw his crutches and then him out of the cab, before spotting a wanted criminal, whipping off her high heels and chasing the man through the back streets of Manchester — right until the point when he tripped, fell and had his head run over by a coach.