CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Our latest TV cop – taking bribes and rolling joints for his old mum
The Responder (BBC1)
Rating: 
Great Coastal Railway Journeys (BBC2)
Rating: 
Raymond Chandler started it.
The hard-drinking author of private eye thrillers described one of his femmes fatales as ‘a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window’.
That line is so good, Boris Johnson borrowed it to describe his mistress Jennifer Arcuri.
Now every crime writer strives to create pithy dialogue crammed with memorable zingers.
Tony Schumacher does it brilliantly in The Responder (BBC1), his five-part series starring Martin Freeman as Liverpool copper Chris Carson, who is sliding into a morass of corruption.
Tony Schumacher creates pithy dialogue crammed with memorable zingers in The Responder (BBC1), his five-part series starring Martin Freeman (pictured) as Liverpool copper Chris Carson, who is sliding into a morass of corruption
Carson, run ragged by the long night shifts, can no longer see the point of his job
The best dialogue isn’t only quotable. It skewers characters, fixing them as securely in our minds as butterflies pinned to a board.
Five words were all it took to tell us everything about the life of teen drug dealer Marco (Josh Finan).
BETTER HALF OF THE NIGHT:
Lord Gerald Fitzalan-Howard had a surprise for wife Emma’s 60th birthday party, on Keeping Up With The Aristocrats (ITV).
He hired a magician to saw her in two.
‘If it goes wrong, it goes wrong,’ Gerald shrugged.
So that’s ‘how the other half live’.
Riding in the back of PC Carson’s patrol car, he was slack-jawed with astonishment to learn that the policeman was not only bringing up a daughter but living with the child’s actual mother as well. ‘Yer doin’ me head in,’ gasped Marco.
Carson, teetering on the edge of a breakdown and forever close to tears or violence, is a soft touch. He gave £30 to red-eyed heroin addict Casey (Emily Fairn).
Two hours later, the money was gone. ‘I’ve got overheads,’ whined Casey, who sleeps in a derelict warehouse on a bed of binbags.
But the best line of all went to Carson himself, a loving dad whose complex personal morality allows him to take backhanders from local gangsters and roll joints for his old mum (Rita Tushingham) in her care home.
Called to the house of an 81-year-old who died in front of her telly, he passed the time while waiting for the police medic by finishing off the dead woman’s flask of pea and ham soup.
‘You think that’s appropriate?’ demanded the doctor.
‘I think it’s home-made,’ shrugged Carson.
Freeman is relishing the role, with a Liverpool accent as thick as Scouse stew.
The stars of most police dramas are brilliant, intuitive and always on call to save the world.
Dedicated: Martin Freeman has confessed he spoke to himself in a Liverpudlian accent for a year and a half in preparation for BBC’s upcoming comedy-drama, The Responder (pictured in 2019)
But Carson, run ragged by the long night shifts, can no longer see the point of his job.
Sitting on the sofa with one serial offender, he found himself staring at a picture of John Wayne.
The two lawmen belong to different universes. Despair was carved across Freeman’s face. He didn’t say anything.
Sometimes sharp dialogue isn’t needed.
Michael Portillo was exploring the seaside around Edinburgh on the first part of Great Coastal Railway Journeys (BBC2)
Michael Portillo was polishing his one-liners as he explored the seaside around Edinburgh on the first part of Great Coastal Railway Journeys (BBC2).
A local geologist, explaining how Scottish scientists first gauged the planet’s age, said: ‘The Earth is about halfway through its life — there’s still about another 5,000 million years to go.’ ‘I’d better check my pension,’ quipped Michael.
And as he picked his way between seabirds on Bass Rock, home to a colony of 150,000 gannets, he muttered, ‘I don’t want to think about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.’
The former Tory golden boy was on especially colourful form, sporting a magnificent knee-length orange mac and matching woolly hat.
For a visit to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, he changed into a tartan suit and tie that made him look like a music hall comedian.
He saw where David Rizzio, the lover of Mary, Queen of Scots, was slashed to death, with 57 knife wounds to his body.
This gory deed left its mark on Michael’s Scottish mother, he revealed.
Nowadays, if a Portillo cuts his finger and draws blood, his loved ones dismiss it as, ‘Rizzio’s murder’.
So much for sympathy.
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