You can tell it’s still winter scheduling on the telly because of the massive amount of detective series around at the moment.

I may be in the minority but I’m thrilled. After a long hard day in the office when it’s freezing outside there’s nothing I like better than a good old British murder mystery.

My only real complaint about the latest crop of offerings is the lack of mystery. And the fact that both the BBC and ITV insist on re-running the best in the genre (Frost, Morse and Joan Hickson’s Marple) just illustrates more keenly that the new boys and girls on the block just don’t measure up in terms of content.

I’m pleased the BBC seems to have moved away from that ridiculous over-frenetic format it used with Waking The Dead and ITV’s Wire in The Blood always seemed to be trying too hard with its gallons of blood and body parts, but the new offerings, Murder in Suburbia on ITV and New Tricks on BBC1 seem to lack any edge at all. It’s not so much whodunit as do we care, so long as the main characters carry on being whimsical and amusing?

This is not to say they’re not good telly and worth a watch however.

New Tricks especially I found enjoyable. The premise of three retired detectives (Dennis Waterman, James Bolam and Alun Armstrong) getting back on the job, led by the ambitious DS Pullman (Amanda Redman) is a tad feeble but the characters are entertaining and the acting (obviously) beyond reproach.

And putting older characters in a police setting obviously has comic potential, like Last Of The Summer Wine coupled with The Sweeney.

In trying to track down a policewoman’s murderer for example, Lane (Armstrong) and Halford (Bolam) have to follow a knicker nicker.

This poses its own problems for men of a certain age.

“You’re a man of the world Jack, what’s a thong teddy?” asks Lane.

“Don’t ask me. I never needed my wife to dress up like a pornographic Christmas turkey,” replies Halford.

And the characters are rather too compelling. As Lane comes home to find his wife gone, the scene where Halford who is recently widowed tells him to pull himself together is both moving and wonderfully acted.

But the sub-plots (thrice divorced Standing [Waterman] is to become a reluctant granddad, Pullman cheated on the victim at Hendon, Lane’s wife etc) rather detract from the main event – ie who killed WPC Kate Daniels.

Still we find out in the end (it’s a faceless armed robber we never meet, very unsatisfactory) but Lane’s wife comes home and they live to bumble through another ‘mystery’ next week.

But for all my sniping, I know I’ll be back watching on Thursday.

It’s refreshingly free of ridiculous police jargon (can I call you guv, guv?), prostitutes and crack houses (let’s face it, in Reading we get enough of those in real life) and there’s enough humour and pathos to make up for the lack of plot.

It’s early days, but if it was down to me I’m make it half an hour longer with a few more twists and turns.

Then it would be perfect.