Last night’s TV review, One of Us (BBC1), Rookies (ITV): murder mysteries are alive and kicking

Well, here we are a good six decades on from the first TV detective shows on our screens (let’s say the real start was the original 1960 BBC series Maigret, revived this year by ITV). The genre is, unlike its many murder victims, alive and kicking. One of Us represents forensic evidence of that vitality, and even a cursory inspection of the first episode of this four-parter suggests a degree of skill and ingenuity has been applied to the commission of a criminally good production.

It’s about a double murder of an apparently blameless couple, newly wed childhood sweethearts, the bride pregnant with their first child. Both slaughtered in their own flat. Both come from the same remote corner of rural Scotland. Both are, or were, very sweet. The junkie who commits the murder, though, is, we learn, plainly motivated by more than grabbing a couple of laptops to buy some scag. For presumably the same real motivation that is so tantalisingly obscure, he steals a car and makes his way through the night to the aforesaid remote countryside, where the two families are still coming to terms with their loss.

We don’t know why – but we do care why, which is why it makes such a great whydunnit. After running his car off the road in a storm near his destination, our junkie/burglar/murderer is rescued by the families who eventually realise that this stranger with severe concussion is certainly the man who took their loved ones from them. Having little alternative, they put him under lock and key in a cage in a cow shed. By the morning he too is dead. There are a few clues around about which one of the various relatives had the opportunity and the motive to finish the murderer off, but none conclusive.

In its intricate construction, One Of Us reminds me of one of those early classic Columbo episodes – to my mind never really bettered (I know Columbo plots told you who did it at the start, but my point stands about the intelligence of the writing). So thanks to the BBC for spending the money on this, and praise goes to writers Harry and Jack Williams, director William McGregor, and producer Colin Wratten. Juliet Stevenson and John Lynch make the most of the excellent material, and it’s great to see Adrian Edmondson here, but, for once, the production team has made the actors’ lives easier rather than the reverse. Like journalism, the key to a good mini-series such as this is that you want to know what happens next – and so you do.

Rookies is a telling glimpse into the lives of probationary police officers, straight out of training and onto the mean streets of Surrey, one of only four police forces in the country that are recruiting – which I suppose we shouldn’t be shocked about in this age of austerity.

I was somewhat more shocked by some of their misadventures. The most unfortunate by far was a big fella who’d inevitably gained the nickname of “Lump”. He’d wanted to be a copper since the age of eight, but his reaching his ambition at long last was marred by his first attempt at arrest: he tumbled over the villain and on top of a female colleague, breaking her leg in three places and dislocating her ankle.

Then there was Loz, who, diminutive as she was, assumed the correct attitude of authority and control when making her first arrest, but spoiling when she could only get as far as “I am arresting you on suspicious of actual bodily harm…” before she started sneezing, apparently something she does when she’s a little bit nervous. Which you do tend to be when you’re out on patrol. Good to know the citizens of Dorking, Reigate and Guildford are in such hands.