JUST when I thought Tyneside-set 55 Degrees North (BBC1, Sunday) was the best weekend cop show along came the almost-unnoticed Detective Murdoch Mysteries (UKTV Gold, Saturday) to tempt us back into the realm of Victorian murder.

The hero is bicycle-owning Toronto heart-throb William Murdoch (played by Canadian actor Peter Outerbridge) which makes him environmentally sound, if somewhat slow, at riding to the rescue.

With one eye on the international market, Keeley Hawes, of BBC1's Spooks fame, has been added as his love interest Dr Julia Ogden, the area's pathologist.

"This is a little racy and are you sure the woman he's with is the doctor?" said my wife as the unlucky in love Murdoch (a previous fiancee is dead) imagines some unusual goings-on involving a mortuary slab. Creator Maureen Jennings based her books on the stiff collar and backstreet sleaze days of the late 19th century with Murdoch forever being told that a suspect is "a friend of the police chief" and finger marks (prints) are new-fangled and untrustworthy.

Anyone who has raised sticky-handed children will tell you that's not true. So far Murdoch has got his man but not the girl as the excellent three-parter concludes tonight.

I certainly hope Inspector Murdoch finds time to investigate Bunking Off (BBC1, Tuesday) about the UK's truants which was listed as a new series. Having spent half-an-hour telling my wife what was going to happen next, after she went along with the claim it wasn't a repeat, she finally admitted: "We've seen this before haven't we?"

Bunking Off actually ran in November last year, so we had a re-run of the strange case of struggling heroin addict Patricia Amos being jailed again by North-West magistrates because her daughter wouldn't go to school. Jailed in 2002 and again last year, pathetic Patricia needs a court-appointed official taking her offspring to school if they are out of her control.

My wife surprised me by rejecting both new series of How Clean Is Your House? and You Are What You Eat (C4, Thursday) despite having bought the book linked to the latter. "Look, I've seen Gillian McKeith's (YAWYE's presenter) ideas for a quick meal and most of them would take all night to prepare," she responded.

But Should I Worry About... ? (BBC1, Thursday) cleverly came back with a look at Takeaways. My wife left the room at one point because we were actually eating as presenter Richard Hammond went down into the sewers to inspect the massive deposits of cooking fat from cooking establishments. But she bravely returned to hear Hammond claim that Harry Ramsden's had asked the BBC for details about the danger to health of current cooking fats.

McDonalds said it was 50 per cent better with food cooking and the state of the kebab industry - six out of ten shops approached by Hammond's team were interested in buying illegal meat - may change the route home of some clubbers forever.

So watching Spelling Bee (ITV1, Thursday), where celebs battled with tricky words and the crafty wit of Chris Tarrant, was definite light relief. "How come we have to have a Yank kid (Samir Patel) helping the teams. Doesn't Britain have its own clever kids?" said my wife in a return to TV form.

Published: 16/07/2005