



The idiosyncratic pathologist

Where: Sherlock, the cast of Silent Witness, Endeavour

We get it. A pathologist is someone who willingly spends their working day with the dead so must be unusual or offbeat in some way. They can’t just be ordinary folk, trying to do a job. No, they must be “other” and possibly on the spectrum, although it’s never said. Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) in Silent Witness is the cool, unemotional bone-kicker with no home life at all. The only place she can find romance is at the office, which rather narrows her options down to fellow whey-faced indoor type Dr Harry Cunningham, a cadaver or a Bunsen burner. Harry’s eventual replacement, Jack Hodgson, is also just your run-of-the-mill forensic pathologist and part-time cage fighter. Like normal.

The cast of Silent Witness. Photograph: Jonathan Ford/BBC

Sexy dead women

Where: True Detective and every brooding detective show before or since

If I never see another deceased sex worker, bent over a log with dream-catchers up her bum, it’ll be too soon. A detective who can’t be bothered to open his mouth when he speaks usually examines said stiff while the camera languorously pans up her body to classical music. Can we just call a moratorium on dead women all together? It’s a cheap shot to kick off your crime thriller with a hot corpse and is so lacking in imagination and so overused it’s actually an insult to your audience. Fair enough, a historical drama about a famous serial killer who offed women might need to include the actual women (the BBC’s Rillington Place, a recent example), but I think we’ve done that literally to death now. Serial killers are bad. Consider the topic covered for the time being and move on to a new subject, please.

Matthew McConaughey as Rusty Cohle in True Detective. Photograph: HBO

The in-show recap

Where: Everything shown on a digital channel

And talking of insulting audiences, the extent to which recaps are used during shows on digital channels constantly interrupted by advert breaks, is now off all known charts. Previously in this short paragraph of text, I said that the extent to which recaps are used in television is getting ridiculous and now I’m going to say something else pertaining to that. Here’s what I’m going to say next. The amount of advertising needed to support something on ITV Be about a man who used to be on Towie now requires each new segment to be 50% “previously” and 49% “coming up next” leaving 1% of actual new content per segment. So look forward to reading that, and other sentences, after this short break. Ugh.

Previously on The Only Way Is Essex … Photograph: ITV

‘I’m going on a journey’

Where: Who Do You Think You Are?, all pop docs presented by a celeb

Ever since it dawned on a TV producer that literally any old layperson can present a documentary as long as it’s couched as a voyage of discovery, we’ve been buried under an avalanche of these shows, seemingly created by randomiser software. Results range from Stephen Tompkinson’s African Balloon Adventure to Robson Crusoe: A Surprising Adventure, in which Robson Green is stranded (for a week) on a paradise island because he’s always wanted to do that, not just because his name sounded good in the title. Let’s follow him on his spurious, entirely arbitrary journey to see if his journey is what Robson Green hoped it might be. The journey doesn’t always have to cross oceans. In fact it’s better if it’s an emotional journey, like when Danny Dyer found out he was royalty (sort of) on Who Do You Think You Are. Actually, I make a notable exception for Dyer. He can go on as many “journeys” as he likes, but everyone else should have their emotive passports revoked for a year.

Danny Dyer in Who Do You Think You Are?. Photograph: Steven Perry/BBC/Wall To Wall

The maverick cop

Where: name one TV cop who isn’t a maverick. ALL of them

This has gone way beyond a joke, all the way out of the other side of the joke and into the sea. Have you ever met a police person? You probably know at least one. If anything, they are very much defined by their desire to play by the rules, do things by the book and otherwise adhere to the strict guidelines laid down for them by their professional body. It seemed fun at first, to throw in a Bergerac or a Bodie and Doyle, with their bomber jackets and their sneering resentment of authority. But police officers are far more like Nick Berry in Heartbeat, and it’s about time TV writers admitted that and moved on from this fetish for bad boys with a talent for one-liners.