Thank you merciful heavens for sending me Showtrial, (BBC1, Sunday). And thank you writer Ben Richards, whose picture is now pinned up above my bed.

Why? Because Richards’ series has arrived at the time when we’re drowning in beach-based TV ‘tec daftness. He’s shown we don’t all have to love old biddy crime solvers, and storylines that are more unlikely than Vera having an affair with Madame Blanc - or endless whodunnits in which plot plays second lead to bright blue locations and Bermuda shorts.

Richards recognises that we don’t need wacky, accidental cops with unlikely names such as Ludwig. We don’t need to go the way of Apple TV, for example, who’ve now released a series in which an agony aunt solves dastardly crimes, while dishing up recipe advice for ostrich pie.

Alternatively, Richards has shouted out to the telly world that we can wallow in really clever drama populated by characters that are both idiosyncratic yet fundamentally believable. We can, and here’s the really clever bit, attach these real people to a storyline that takes viewers on a journey, where all is never quite what it seems.

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Showtrial tells of the hit and run death of a posh climate change protester and the main suspect is a police officer. Terrific start. It allows the writer to explore themes of sympathy (or lack of it) for disruptive activists and the dark perceptions of British police officers.

What the opener in the series revealed was the writer’s ability to obfuscate beautifully the perceptions of the central characters. We had the police suspect Justin (Michael Socha) a right-wing streak of arrogance who hates activists, who seems to wallow in the attention derived from his arrest and the chance to showboat his cleverness. But is he redeemed by a single event which formed his anti-activist thoughts, and revealed a hidden humanity?

We had the central lawyer, Sam (Adeel Akhtar) immensely clever, a superhero defender in an M&S tweed jacket, a sad insomniac with a tragic past, yet a man who can’t stop himself behaving inappropriately towards a female work colleague.

But what the writer also manages is to deliver cutting, sharp zeitgeisty dialogue that reflects the world as it actually exists, with not a Bermuda short to be seen.

The Hardacres is a Victorian-era northern rags-to riches taleThe Hardacres is a Victorian-era northern rags-to riches tale (Image: free) There are no beaches in view either in The Hardacres (Channel 5, Monday) this is a Victorian-era northern rags-to riches tale, although it did immediately suggest comparisons with LA-set Sixties TV comedy classic The Beverly Hillbillies.

No, honestly. The parallels with the lives of the Yorkshire three-generation, hand-to-mouth living decent family and the backwoods shotgun shack family from Tennessee were screaming out.

Both the hard-done-to Hardacres and the Clampetts saw their lives change dramatically by a single event. The Hardacres escaped penury (and worse) by scraping together a few shillings from their fried fish stall - and two pages of script later their South African mining investment delivered them mansion-buying money. The Clampetts of course struck oil, and immediately moved to Beverly Hills.

Of course, each of the welly-wearing families then came up against monied snobbery in a new world, both mocked yet courted, thanks to their new brass. Yet, both families tried hard to hold onto their roots, their sleeping six-to-a-bed- gingham-wearing mentality, while being lured by a shiny new Cadillac, or a flash horse and cart.

That said, the programme comparison is a little invidious. The Hardacres is the brainchild of Call the Midwife writers - and it shows. These people chose to make the series they say because "more working-class people watch telly than any other demographic, but they don't feel like they are represented on the screen", which is a nonsense in itself.

Instead, they should have set out to create a series that’s not entirely one-dimensional and predictable in which cloth-capped Bisto-kid Yorkshireness is laid on thicker than an original slice of Hovis.

The Beverly Hillbillies, on the other hand, was innovative, clever and one of the first examples of television satirising America’s pursuit of wealth over humanity. And very, very funny.

​That said, the Hardacres, is funny in places. But not intentionally. And if you enjoy entirely unchallenging television with plot lines that are joyously unsurprising and dialogue that suggests spoof, settle down with your Horlicks and enjoy.

Gayle Telfer Stevens and Louise McCarthy reflect real-life charactersGayle Telfer Stevens and Louise McCarthy reflect real-life characters 

There is lots to enjoy in Stevens & McCarthy, (BBC1, Monday) with Gayle Telfer Stevens' and Louise McCarthy's ability to reflect real-life characters and deliver them in the form of some wonderful grotesques, the sort of women you would avoid like the plague at a party.

And there is the suggestion that the long-term double act have sat down and swallowed up sketch show successes such as Chewin’ The Fat ‘till their cheeks swell. But to display this level of homage is not a bad thing at all.

Yet while a natural exuberance for their own work, getting excited over a line ‘Twinkly lights!’ carries them a long way what is a little lacking is pay offs. The sketches often hang in the air, screaming out for a tag line, which I know is not always required in modern comedy formats, but the Still Game stars very much realised the importance of a ‘Gonnae no dae that’ delivered at the right time can indeed be a thing of joy.