A Touch Of Frost (ITV1)

YOU could be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled across the sequel to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind as Detective Inspector Jack Frost's latest case got under way.

There were strange lights in the night sky, appearing to show a craft hovering before landing. Even David Jason's down-to-earth detective, who seems to take everyone and everything in his stride no matter how strange, might have been expected to be alarmed by this occurence.

Well, that might have been the case if he hadn't been indulging in his favourite hobby - food. Investigating delivery boys working for local takeaways involved ordering endless meals, 27 in total, and eating most of them.

"I was expecting crispy duck and pancakes," he said with an air of disappointment as he opened the door to find local reporter Janet Carter rather than a takeaway delivery. She flounced around in tight top and jeans, and wouldn't know a deadline if one slapped her round the face. Her task, apart from being a very unconvincing journalist, was to dig around for information for Frost.

As usual, he joined up several seemingly unconnected cases like a puzzle in one of those join-the-dots books.

The alien landing was reported by autistic Laurence, a space-mad lad who'd actually witnessed the trashing of equipment at a quarry and the murder of the nightwatchman.

This had something to do with a housing development plan that was a life or death deal for local businessman Stuart Mackintosh. Frost also had to deal with a missing child and a series of robberies from homes whose occupants had only just moved in.

Apart from eating, Frost's private life is nondescript compared to most TV 'tecs with their broken marriages, drink problems, and young mistresses. He does enjoy a degree of antagonism with his boss, the pompous Superintendent Mullett, but always manages to get one over on him.

He's a man of action if the situation demands it. This latest story featured something different from the usual police series pursuits - a motorbike chase through the streets of Denton involving takeaway delivery riders, with Frost clinging on as a passenger on the back of one of the pursuers' vehicles.

But he's basically an old-fashioned detective who plays fair and square with victims and suspects as his brain sifts through the clues. His deceptively easy-going manner hides a sharp intelligence that doesn't miss a thing.

"I've got one of those minds that never stops whirring," he says, explaining why he's still top of the cops.