TV review

Either I'm getting brainier or the Taggart detectives are getting thicker. I worked out whodunit well in advance of DCI Burke and his crime-fighting team.

If only the Scottish sleuths had listened to me, I could have saved them a lot of worry and anxiety, not to mention sour-faced Burke being held at gunpoint by the guilty party.

This latest 90-minute story began promisingly, with a gruesome killing and the discovery of a bloody corpse whose hand had been sawn off, the type of horrible "mudder" we've come to expect from Taggart.

Considering some of the real-life horrors on TV - those Linda Barker ads, anything with Piers Morgan presenting and the debut of yet another property show - Taggart is hard pressed to produce the yuk factor with its killings these days.

A single rose left by the body was the killer's signature on this occasion. Bloody footprints showed that a woman watched while the foul dead was committed.

Gemma, the on-the-spot pathologist, was asked if this showed the victim had been killed by a jealous husband. "Bit difficult to tell from just the shoes," she replied, not unreasonably.

The dead man was a chap who, two decades previously, had been the main witness in a trial that put Glasgow gangster Jim Naysmith behind bars. Now he's out and working in a flower shop. A-ha, you're thinking, rose by the body, ex-killer in florist's ... if only life in Taggart was so simple.

As usual, DI Robbie Ross jumped to the wrong conclusion, not once but twice. He was declaring: "I think we've found the killer" by the time the first commercial break appeared, after a mere 16 minutes.

He was also taken in by a female law student (allegedly) who fluttered her eyes and who he allowed unrestricted access to the police station inquiry HQ. No change there then. Or with DS Jackie Reid, whose main function these days is to keep Burke and Ross from killing each other, while poor DC Stuart Fraser is left to do the dirty work - like landing in the cat litter while indulging in an unlawful spot of breaking and entering a suspect's flat.

Thank goodness for Gemma who, although very different to the series' original elderly male pathologist, was the only one who showed any sense at all and virtually solved the case single-handedly while the rest of them were squabbling.

Titus Andronicus, Newcastle Theatre Royal

THE macabre Titus Andronicus may have been a firm favourite with Elizabethan audiences but it fails to hold the same appeal for current theatre goers.

Murder, mayhem, jealousy, revenge and buckets of blood provide all the hallmarks of the bard's tragedies but in Titus, Shakespeare abandons the classical rules and frequently teeters on farce.

The play begins as it means to end, with Titus ceremoniously parading his manacled trophies of war - the Queen of the Goths, her sons and her Moor lover Aron.

Only seconds into it and despite the desperate pleas of Tamora, her son Alarbus is sacrificed to the Roman gods. The move triggers an unrelenting chain of brutal vengeance and counter revenge - albeit with lighter touches of humour.

Blood curdling moments, however, abound. Titus has his hand hacked off on stage while his daughter Lavinia in a toe-twitching performance staggers on after being raped and having her tongue torn out and both hands severed for good measure.

The brutality culminates with Tamora being dished up a pie containing the remains of her sons before being stabbed, and Titus snapping the neck of his sullied daughter before he too meets his maker.

It is a theatrical rollercoaster which many in the audience may not wish to experience again, but the production is nevertheless portrayed with the RSC's usual consummate professionalism. Praise must go to David Bradley in the title role and Joe Dixon as the wonderfully wicked Aron.

Marjorie McIntyre

l Runs until Saturday. Box office: 0870 905 5060