Grantchester
Have you noticed it too, or is this just a symptom of my deceptively youthful demeanour — but aren’t coppers looking older every year?
Geordie (Robson Green) was informed by his chief inspector, as Grantchester (ITV1) returned, that the grizzled veteran detective would soon be eligible for early retirement.
‘Early’? Back in Geordie’s day, long-serving bobbies were able to draw a pension after the age of 50.
Robson is 59 and, well-preserved though he might be, he’s currently on BBC2 every evening with his Weekend Escapes, encouraging us to enjoy sedate hobbies such as star-gazing or fly-fishing.
He’s a junior detective compared to Peter Capaldi, currently starring aged 65 as a cynical DCI in Criminal Record on Apple TV+.
Robson Green (pictured) plays Geordie Keating in Grantchester
He stars alongside Tom Brittany (pictured, right) who plays Will Davenport
And both of them are striplings beside 77-year-old Brenda Blethyn, still playing DCI Vera Stanhope on a Sunday night.
At least Geordie’s old enough to have grown out of madcap sports such as motorbike racing, unlike crime-busting vicar Will Davenport.
Will took a tumble through a heap of hay bales at the village bike trials and, though he emerged laughing, his stepson Ernie (Isaac Highams) begged him never to get back in the saddle.
It’s a cardinal rule of cosy nostalgic dramas that children’s pleas must always be heeded: ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,’ and so forth.
That’s a Biblical quotation, Book of Psalms, so Will really should have been paying attention.
Instead, following sharp words with his new bride Bonnie (Charlotte Ritchie, who has been dipped head-first in peroxide), the Rev revved up and went chasing after her on his bike.
The inevitable happened — bombing along, the wind whistling in his dog collar, Will hit a pedestrian. To be flattened by a hit-and-run vicar is a nasty way to go.
By then, Will and Geordie had already solved a murder, after a young biker was discovered in a field with his head bashed in.
No deduction was required to find the killer: the duo simply interviewed all the minor characters and released everyone who seemed nice.
That meant the biker girl who had to hide her gender to compete in races was ruled out immediately, and the rough lad who made sexist comments spent a night in the cells but was let go when he admitted that he was a virgin who liked playing board games.
The only suspect left unquestioned was the victim’s best mate. Realising there was no one else on Geordie’s shortlist, he submitted to the inevitable and confessed. As sleuthing goes, this was sloppy.
Zuckerberg: King Of The Metaverse
Police will need to call on younger detectives than Geordie and Vera to investigate internet crimes in virtual online worlds known as the ‘metaverse’.
Zuckerberg: King Of The Metaverse (Sky Documentaries) promised to shed light on what this digital global community really is. But the title was misleading, a piece of typical Facebook fake news.
The only tenuous reference was a clip of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promoting the social media app’s rebirth, under the brandname Meta.
Otherwise, this two-hour profile was a chronological plod through his career, from launching the software with a few dozen users at Harvard in 2004, to global dominance with 49 per cent of the world’s population signed up to his products 20 years later.
Zuckerberg wasn’t interviewed, and nor was his first financier Peter Thiel, who set up PayPal.
The only tenuous reference was a clip of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) promoting the social media app’s rebirth, under the brandname Meta
That left the usual suspects, such as whistleblower Frances Haugen and longtime critic Roger McNamee, to level allegations that were disturbing but not new.
If you’re interested in Zuckerberg, you knew all this already. If you’re not, two hours is 90 minutes too long.
