Grace and The Gold

One detective series ended and another began last Sunday with ostensibly little in common.

Both reflected how police investigations have changed, illustrating the ways the police go about their business.

In Grace the detective invented by crime writer Peter James has to investigate assaults on lone women preyed upon by a prowler.

These started some 11 years ago at the time of the London Olympics, oddly enough the time that I first came to Brighton, where the series is set.

You don’t see much location apart from the Pier and the exterior of the main police station. Neither the acting nor the dialogue are particularly convincing but the plot and tempo are.

A pervy taxi driver and vain Assistant Commissioner who is in the wrong place at the wrong time are initial suspects but Grace works out the perp.

The Gold was criticised for glamourising crime.

Kenneth Noye – the central figure in disposing of the gold bars stolen in the Brinks Mat heist – is depicted more cheeky chappie tilting his lance at the class system than the violent villain that he was.

Personally I thought James Loudun as Noye was not physically imposing enough.

You could hardly imagine him stabbing the undercover SAS-trained policeman Fordham ten times.

Hugh Bonneville was excellent as Detective Inspector Boyes leading the investigation.

He was obsessed and mistrustful of the freemasonic element in the police in Kent where Noye lived.

Yes, policing on TV has moved on since the days when Sergeant Dixon in Dixon of Dock Green greeted us affably with “Evenin’ all …” from the steps of his police station.