AS a half-washed tin of cat food sailed into the plastic carrier bag containing my lunch, I kind of knew it wasn't the best time of day to be discussing the week's television with my wife.

"Look, I'm recycling aren't I? It just happens to be the wrong bag, don't you like gourmet chicken and liver with your cheese sandwiches?" she snapped unsympathetically as I separated remnant of cat breakfast from my survival snack of the day.

I blame the BBC. The grim reaper of recycling had been happily setting up the ironing board on Thursday night with the expectation that DIY SOS was going to keep her entertained.

"Then on came this new peculiar The Inspector Lynley Mysteries where he's had a personality transplant so that now both he and Havers are unpleasant pieces of work. It's obvious he doesn't love his wife and he and Havers fancy each other," she raged.

Not only that but a far-fetched plot saw Havers demoted from detective sergeant to beat bobby for saving Lynley and a child from certain drowning by killing a murderous female police chief with a flare gun.

Writer Ann-Marie Di Mambro ignored the fact that an inquest and police internal inquiry team would establish if Havers was guilty of any wrong-doing.

Even in this day and age I don't think cops who kill colleagues are put back in uniform. Why couldn't hard-up Havers just be disciplined for selling her story to a newspaper? Or be reduced to the ranks for leaving her kitty tins out for collection on the wrong day?

Anyway, there's far bigger detective sergeants to fry this week. In the words of Radio 2's Steve Wright In The Afternoon: "Who is this new guy in Midsomer Murders (ITV1, Sunday) and why can't we have Troy back?"

After a long silence, ITV last week finally released details about 27-year-old John Hopkins from Dunstable, who has arrived in TV's murder-strewn margins of the Home Counties to become Det Sgt Dan Scott.

As he has all the acting ability of a Matalan catalogue model on his day off, Hopkins has rather struggled to follow Teesside's Daniel Casey into the role of DCI Barnaby's assistant.

However, Scott is far more of a ladykiller than tremulous Troy. In Sunday's The Straw Woman, minutes after Scott had scored with a Midsomer teacher she was knocked out and burned to death while the two detectives made some rather half-hearted attempts to put out the flames.

Mr H is a former Royal Shakespeare Company actor who admits: "I never saw myself doing Midsomer Murders. I usually get theatre and Shakespeare and all that posh stuff."

Perhaps he and Havers-playing Sharon Small should change places. Let's face it, the two stuffed shirts deserve each other and Havers could join the Barnaby (John Nettles) fan club, for ladies of a certain age. And as Havers is by far the best detective out of all four, she'd solve each Midsomer murder before half the cast was bumped off. Think of the saving in recycled blood.

Published: 06/03/2004