NCS Manhunt (BBC1)

I take back everything I said the other week about The Vice's Pat Chappel being the unhappiest detective on television. He looks positively cheerful next to the investigators in this country's answer to the FBI - the National Crime Squad, although the inititals might more accurately stand for No Charming Smiles.

"I'm going to lose it with you in a minute," growled David Suchet's crime boss as the body count mounted and his colleagues ran around in circles trying to figure out the motive for a series of contract killings.

Suchet's clenched teeth snarling is rivalled only by that of Samantha Bond, a fellow officer who snaps like a mad dog at suspects. "I've got rights," one pointed out. "No, you haven't," she barked back.

Then there's Keith Barron, who never seems to take off his mac, is bad-tempered, understandably perhaps as he's in overall charge of this bunch of surly detectives. "I don't know oose wurse - 'im or 'er," he moaned. Melanie Hill's communications expert Ruby Sparks is the only bright spark around.

Their uncivil behaviour is, perhaps, excusable in the face of the cardboard cockney (or thereabouts) villainy of Anita Dobson. "I've taken the nose off a bitch for a remark like that," remarked her character. At least, the bad guy played by Steven Berkoff, currently doing the rounds as a villain in any TV series that will have him, was behind bars, presumably having been found guilty of overacting yet again.

I didn't much care for the pilot episode of NCS Manhunt and this - the first of three two-part stories - had much the same effect. Like last week's Outside The Rules, with its serial killer who crucified and did nasty things to his victims, this series went out of its way to be unpleasant in word and deed. The gore and brutality level in the killings was high for a non-medical primetime series.

"It's a bad day, isn't it. A bad day for all of us," said Suchet's character, accurately summing up the whole enterprise.