On TV

CSI: NY (five)

Law And Order: Criminal Intent (five)

UNEXPECTED as it was, celebrity skater John Barrowman being chucked off ITV1's Dancing On Ice wasn't the most shocking thing to be seen on television at the weekend.

The screen was awash with the blood of murder victims who'd died horribly to provide ammunition for the investigative guns of an army of small screen sleuths.

All have different methods of detection. Genteel but canny Miss Marple depends on her instinct to solve murders. I hesitate to say gut instinct because gut isn't the type of word you use around a tweedy old spinster like Agatha Christie's amateur detective.

Not for her the "make my day, punk" approach of Dirty Harry. She's more Merry Marple, who gently and methodically arrives at the identity of the murderer without so much as raising her voice let alone a Magnum 45.

Sleeping Murder was a typically convoluted story involving a seemingly haunted house, dark deeds in India, a end-of-the-pier troupe known as The Funny Bones and an incredibly sunny seaside trip.

Geraldine McEwan twittered about as Miss Marple, expressing mild surprise at encountering so many familiar faces in one place. Marple is the starriest series on TV with a fresh guest star popping up every few minutes with Dawn French, Martin Kemp, Sarah Parish, Russ Abbot, Geraldine Chaplin and Phil Davis among them.

The plot is the star of CSI: NY not the actors. The more ingenious the cause of death, the better the episode. This new series had a splendid opening as a man climbing the Empire State Building fell from the 34th floor. He landed on the sixth floor terrace. His brain, knocked out of his head by the impact, landed on the street.

His friend said he was "too careful, too good to just fall", leading Detective Mac Taylor to the obvious conclusion that "something happened up there". That something turned out to be a murder. Witnessing, through the window, someone being shot, does tend to make you lose your grip on reality - and the outside of the building.

Unlike Marple, the CSI team can tackle more than one case at once. Also testing their brain cells this week was the murder of a man who was wearing an eight million dollar rhinestone bra. A real treasure chest, you might say.

He'd been punched in the stomach with the attacker leaving a fist imprint that could be used to identify him. Miss Marple doesn't need forensics, just an observant eye and inquisitive nature. But you had to admit that the mosquito providing the evidence to nail the killer in CSI: NY was pretty ingenious.

Law And Order: Criminal Intent - also returning as part of five's Saturday crime night - is more traditional, involving detectives slowly building up the evidence.

The stabbing of a student architect with a screwdriver set charisma-free Detectives Goren and Eames on a trail of bigamy, pregnancy, bankruptcy and a man dressed as a giant nickel.

It lacked the eccentric sleuthing of an Agatha Christie whodunit and the forensic-based detection of CSI, instead relying on good old-fashioned police work.

The biggest mystery was the end credit telling the viewer that "the preceding story is fictional, no actual person or event is depicted". Surely they weren't worried they'd be sued by a group of killer architects.