CUFFS, BBC1, 8pm (Wednesday, 28th)
According to this new drama series, there are three types of police officer: fighters, speed freaks and bed-wetters. “So which one are you?” Ryan asks his rookie partner, the young and nervous Jake.
As well as being the new boy, Jake is also the chief inspector’s son, and has to endure his new colleagues speculating that he “jumped the queue” of young recruits because “he’s got a dad with stripes on his arm.”
Partnered with Ryan, they are a rather stereotypical, made-for-TV pair: Jake is white, gentle and gay, whereas Ryan is black, tough and streetwise, but the situations they find themselves in are not typical of TV cop shows. On their first call-out, they confront a screaming and bloodied man waving a knife. Ryan speaks to him with tenderness and is soon holding the man in his arms, calming him as they wait for an ambulance. That’s not typical of TV cops who’d rather kick the door down and pin a suspect to the carpet.
Also, the drama is set on the sunny streets of Brighton, instead of the usual TV haunts of London or Manchester. The backdrop is of funfairs and candyfloss, not drug dens and damp alleys. And might this be the first police drama which opens on a naturist beach with a fight between drunken stag-do Vikings and some outraged nudists?
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