New comedy-drama starring Adrian Dunbar as old-school DI Walter Gambon, struggling with debt, life as a widower and the technological implications of Policing 2.0. As the Met transmogrifies into a branch of PC World around him, Walt finds himself handed an exhaustingly enthusiastic partner and a hefty workload bequeathed by a deceased colleague. It's a bit light on laughs but there's still just enough to keep your interest contained in custody.

Radio Times review

It's a truth universally acknowledged that broadcasters don't put good new stuff on Friday nights at the height of summer. Which doubtless explains why Walter has washed up here where it will probably die quietly, alone and unnoticed.

It's a woefully under-written comedy/drama about a decent cop, the Walter of the title played by Adrian Dunbar, that's neither funny nor dramatic. So why are we reviewing it, you might ask, dear reader? Well, because it's new and the cast give their hearts and souls to material that doesn't deserve it.

Dunbar in particular (so brilliant as Line of Duty's closed, troubled anti-corruption cop Ted Hastings) is winning as the hapless Walter, a widower with money troubles and a really annoying teenage daughter. And he has a dippy but endearing sidekick (Alexandra Roach, from Utopia). Walter is obviously angling for a series, but I wouldn't bother.

That thin line between stupid and clever isn't always a funny one. The concluding part of Charlie Brooker's would-be non-stop laughfest gets becalmed between metatextual policier spoofing and jokes about bumming. The inventive sight gags that distinguished our first stint with Jack Cloth (John Hannah) and Anne Oldman (Suranne Jones) have been largely sacrificed in favour of exhausting single entendres, while the repetition that begins as part of the joke ends up being plain repetitive.

Which is a shame, as it's always fun watching serious actors (in this case, gnarled mobster Stephen Dillane and uppity politician Anna Chancellor) being very silly. The understandably threadbare plot, by the way, sees Cloth's cover blown and Goodgirl (Chancellor) locking horns with Boss (Julian Rhind-Tutt) over whose running the city of Town. Rather more miss than hit; perhaps Karen Gillan and Adrian Dunbar, lined up for the imminent third series, can revive a concept that's run out of steam rather quicker than we might have hoped.