The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (BBC1)

The biggest mystery about Payment In Blood was not who killed the three victims but why I bothered watching to the end of this run-of-the-mill detective story.

Not only did we have the inevitable odd couple paired up as the two main detectives - he's posh, she's not - but the plot featured that overused storyline of the cop who's too involved with one of the witnesses so that his investigative common sense goes out of the window as his emotions kick in.

The early camera shot of a wall decorated with knives signalled that someone was going to get stabbed. Joy was duly found in bed with a sharp implement, which at least meant she didn't have to stick around for another 75 or so minutes like the rest of us.

Her murder happened at a country house where various thespians were rehearsing a play. The motive for the killing appeared to be that someone had made some last minute changes to the script. "You don't murder someone about a play," complained one of the suspects.

Maybe, but this TV programme was severe provocation to do someone grievous bodily harm.

The mild antagonism between Inspector Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) and his partner Sergeant Harris (Sharon Small) was hardly enough to maintain interest as the story moved at a pace that would have made a snail look like an Olympic sprinter.

Lynley had it in for director Rhys Davies Jones because he was not only a wife beater but was chatting up police profiler and old flame Helen Clyde. "My friendship with Helen had nothing to do with this," he said, although we knew better, having seen far too many previous detectives blinded by love.

As the bodies mounted up, Lynley could only stand around asking strange questions such as, "Why was the first night he made love to you, the night Joy died in a room next to you?".

This at least served the purpose of keeping us all up to scratch with the plot as his speeches summarised the story so far. "She was about to discover she's living in a soap opera plot where her father was unfaithful to her adored mother and her lover is her brother," he said, realising that many viewers would have nodded off by now.

The ending was hardly unexpected. Just a long time coming.