The inside story on the boys and girls in blue.

BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey makes no secret of the fact that she'd like Merseybeat to become the police equivalent of hospital series Holby City and run virtually all year long. In other words, Merseybeat is a soap in everything but name.

The series certainly concentrates almost exclusively on the private lives of the officers at Newton Park, treating crime as an inconvenience that has to be tolerated between the marital rows, affairs, and domestic dramas. Both cases in the first episode of the new series were directly linked to the regular characters.

Station boss Susan Blake (Haydn Gwynne) found her violent ex-husband in the cells, while her current partner was left to move house on his own. Her colleagues, meanwhile, were chasing a detective who'd escaped from the cells after being found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice. "You have tarnished the good name of the police service," the judge told him, little knowing that hardly anyone at Newton Park seems to play by the book.

The future doesn't look any quieter with the arrival of two female recruits who are old sparring partners. "We go way back," snarled Jackie on seeing Jodie, before the inevitable catfight broke out. Expect the crime rate to soar as these two spit and scratch out each other's eyes over the next nine episodes.

I wish I could believe Susan Blake when she says, "I'm sure you've got better things to do than stand around gossiping" because the sole purpose of Merseybeat cops seems to be to stand around gossiping.

I knew little about William the Conqueror, apart from 1066 and all that, before Nigel Spivey's history lesson in Kings And Queens. I now know that William used to drag his child bride Matilda around by her hair - "even so she bore him nine children". Nice to know she didn't bear a grudge.

William himself was the illegitimate son of Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy. While his tutors and stewards were killed, young Will grew up to be tall and tough (certainly tough enough to drag his wife around by her hair). The Brits didn't offer much resistance to him acquiring his Conqueror title. William's army landed on the Sussex coast unopposed. He scooped up two handfuls of shingles from the beach and declared: "See how I take the land of England with my bare hands". As for those Southerners, he had only to encircle London for them to hand over the keys.