Karen Pirie
Rating:
Blame the VHS player.

Before the boom in home video machines in the 1980s, murder mysteries never stretched across two hours.
It wasn't until the launch of Inspector Morse in 1987 that film-length episodes became the norm — when ITV bosses rightly guessed that, with many viewers taping shows to watch later, two hours was not too long.
The experiment proved too successful.

Now, the bulk of the channel's crime serials are 120-minute slogs, including adverts. And most don't merit it.
A number of recent efforts, such as Professor T with Ben Miller or Roger Allam's Murder In Provence, are just baggy.
The characters are too lightweight and the plots too thin to sustain us for the length of a football match plus extra time.
Others, such as Ridley earlier this month, demand ruthless pruning. I'd chop out all of Adrian Dunbar's nightclub crooning for a start.
For quite different reasons, Karen Pirie (ITV) — a three-part series following a cold-case investigation — is also badly suited to the extra-long format.

It is a strong story, with an instantly likeable central character, the inexperienced but capable detective sergeant played by Lauren Lyle.




CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Without her...
James Nesbitt (left), who plays Tom Brannick, and Charlene McKenna (right), who plays Niamh McGovern, in Bloodlands













Bloodlands (BBC1), however, knows how to portion its pie.

James Nesbitt's raving mad tale of a Belfast police assassin is spread over six gripping hour-long segments, each digestible enough to keep us keen. Wherever DCI Tom Brannick goes, there's a crowd of armed police waiting for his orders. This time, half were in black combat suits like Ninja warriors and the rest were in hairy camouflage suits, crawling through the Northern Ireland landscape like green yetis.
Nesbitt is enjoying himself, Серіали з українською озвучкою - https://uakino.pl/19027-velikij-nejt.html [hop over to this site] switching on a cold-eyed stare that acquires a psycho glaze as his eyes roll up in their sockets.
Pompously macho and self-consciously alpha male, he's great at looking worried but bluffing it out each time he realises he's potentially given himself away.

Bloodlands is schlock, but it's addictive schlock.