Police partnerships – you know, Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, etc – are always interesting. Because of the nature of the work, because they can play off each other, interact and be different.

Jackie “Stevie” Stevenson and John River of River (BBC1) are certainly different. She’s young, fun and worldly, likes holidays and singing along to 70s disco classics in the car (love that Tina Charles scene, both of them and his lonely karaoke moment later). He’s a bookish Beatles man and a workaholic, troubled and world-weary.

And Swedish! Hey, that’s one way of getting a bit of Scandinavian noir into something: getting an actual lugubrious Scandinavian – the lovely Stellan Skarsgård – and plonking him right in the centre, the title character.

“Stevie” is played by Nicola Walker. Also lovely, but confusing as she’s also a cop in Unforgotten, which just started on ITV. And I was already muddling that with From Darkness (unearthing of bones and running from the past with Anne-Marie Duff) on BBC1. There’s so much TV police work kicking off at the moment that I need to put up some of those boards detectives stick stuff to in my living room to keep the cases separate in my head.

Anyway, River and Stevie have a nice relationship. She annoys the crap out of him and teases him mercilessly. There’s clearly a lot of proper affection between them as well. It’s a slightly odd working relationship, though; when River spots a Ford Mondeo they’ve been looking for, follows the driver into a shop then chases him (to the man’s accidental death, it turns out), she doesn’t really get involved or help very much. And then it becomes clear why: she’s dead.

Oh. One of those kinds of partners – the dead kind. She was killed on duty; he was there, this Mondeo may have been involved. No wonder River is so miserable. Well, that’s his default disposition – he’s a TV cop after all. But, on top of that, his partner, his friend, a woman he probably loved (though he’s unlikely to admit that to anyone, least of all himself) died next to him. To the grumpiness add grief and guilt.

Stevie’s not the only person haunting him (ghosts, or whatever – he calls them “manifests”). Mondeo man (who may have been involved in Stevie’s murder or may just be a drug dealer) turns up at a press conference. A tragic girl – a modern-day Juliet Capulet – whose disappearance River is working on, turns up around the copper’s flat. “How do you let go of a person if you don’t know why they’ve gone?” the girl’s mother asks River. This, you suspect, is the key to why these people aren’t properly leaving when they die.

River the miserable Swede sees dead people then. Kinda Wallander meets Sixth Sense. I’m putting that on my board. I’ve also got a picture of Thomas Neill Cream on there. Yes, the Lambeth Poisoner, another of River’s manifests. Why is he back, though, when everyone knows why he went? He was hanged for being a serial killer in the olden days. My River board is getting more intriguing and distinct from my From Darkness board and my Unforgiven one.

It’s more than just crime drama – it’s about personal tragedy, demons; it’s a study of loss and grief (which it shares with the greatest Nordic noir of them all: the first series of The Killing). It’s also a study of that – killing – and why people do it. And why they did it – Mr Cream brings a historical perspective to it. And Abi Morgan, the creator of the series, brings a characteristic humanness to it all; it’s as much about who the people are as about what they do to each other. Good enough for me.

There are plenty of great things in Girls to Men (Channel 4). Alfie, Ethan and Billy (formerly Ana, Lauren and Connie) talk frankly and often movingly about being born in the wrong body. I’m just struggling a bit with some of the practicalities.

Such as Billy starting the final part of his transformation. The surgeon draws a penis plan, like a sewing pattern, on Billy’s stomach, then slices away. Billy’s new penis is rolled and sewn up and stuffed; testicles with valves and pumps will be added to make it operate. It’s amazing and brilliant, but I’m watching and wincing through my fingers with my legs crossed. Obviously I’m an old-fashioned prude, but I’m not sure I want down-there surgery in 48-inch high definition.