Inspector Steine

Bright Constable Twitten (Matt Green) wants to cheer up poor Sergeant Brunswick (John Ramm) but it's hard going when they're under the command of Inspector Steine (pronounced Steen and played by Michael Fenton Stevens) who can't spot a crime when it's going on in his own nick. As it often is, as their cleaning lady Mrs Groynes (Samantha Spiro) is a criminal mastermind. Enter Harry Jupiter (Philip Jackson), top reporter and Brunswick's idol. You have to be spry to follow the twists in Lynne Truss's cartwheeling comedy.

Lynne Truss's sublime Brighton-set police drama pastiche returns for a six-part run. It's still 1957 and Sgt Brunswick remains the worst undercover operative around, regularly getting shot for his troubles. Yet he's attracted the attention of a tenacious crime reporter who wants to write about the ordinary heroic copper. But what will the Daily Clarion's finest make of an officer with 36 bullet-hole scars who thinks the idea of a criminal records system sounds like "girls' work"? As usual, the period detail and post-war patter impresses, but the whole thing is stolen by cockney-charlady-cum-crooked-mastermind Mrs Groynes (Samantha Spiro) who effortlessly shoehorns in such berserk but perspicacious declarations as, "well all this standing around jawing won't get the Rome Treaty ratified and change the course of European affairs irrevocably and for ever now, will it dears?"