Well, the title is appropriate: Deep Sleep. Given the leisurely two-hour timeslot, this would have been the state of many viewers by the time the end credits rolled.

I've seen tortoises move faster than this oh-so-slow dramatisation - the first of three - of one of Frances Fyfield's novels about Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Helen West.

As for top telly person Amanda Burton being the star, the words money, old and rope spring to mind. She was hardly in it. True, Burton got to wear that air of slightly-pained apprehension that's her trademark as well as adopting that equally familiar flirtatious grin when charming a market stall trader into supplying information.

The problem is that West isn't a policeman or a private eye, and doesn't even have a dramatic courtroom appearance to fall back on. She just has suspicions. In this case, worries over the death of a pharmacist's wife with too much chloroform in her blood.

As her boyfriend - whom she calls by his surname, Bailey, for reasons not entirely clear - is involved in the case, the two can work hand in hand when they're not mooning around her smart flat where he does all the cooking and cleaning, West being too posh to soil her hands.

She also has the sort of boss that leading characters in TV police series always have, one who's more concerned with how the crime figures look than actually bringing criminals to book. Undeterred, West sets out to investigate the case of the pharmacist's wife out of hours. Well, she had plenty of time on her hand with her boyfriend doing the domestic duties.

One interesting fact to be learnt was that, like viagra, chloroform is an aphrodisiac, with a sniff of the stuff proving a bit of a turn-on. Expect queues to form this morning at the chemist shop with people requesting bottles of the stuff. Nothing in the story aroused as much interest. We knew the pharmacist was the murderer. The only suspense was wondering when he'd get around to administering a dose to his female assistant.

The fact that the denouement depended on an unexploded bomb and a credulity-stretching connection between aforementioned assistant and a policeman, made the plot less than convincing. There's a place on TV for detective series that don't rely on shoo-outs, car chases and violent acts, but to succeed they need far more interesting characters and story than Deep Sleep provided.