The Thrill Of Mystery

The current series of BBC One’s “Line Of Duty” ended last Sunday. Thandie Newton’s portrayal of psychopath detective Roz Huntley was riveting.

She’s one of the main reasons this particular series – following on from the previous three – attracted millions of viewers.

Each episode contained several threads – murder, assault, accusations of sexism, police corruption and (something rarely shown in TV dramas) husband-beating.

As with all dramatic stories, in the series finale, it’s likely that long-hidden dark secrets were revealed and those who deserved it will have received their come-uppance.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to drop any finale spoilers in here!

With that compelling series ending, the equally excellent “Broadchurch” coming to a definite end (there will be no more!) two weeks ago, and another cracking thriller “The Replacement” ending recently, the TV schedules currently remind me of supermarket shelves late on Christmas Eve.

Stripped bare . . . apart from some sprigs of holly!

What’s interesting is, in this age of box-set bingeing and digital recordings you can play back any time, many millions were so gripped by “Broadchurch” and “Line Of Duty” they preferred to watch them as they went out ‘live’ rather than catch up with them later.

They did this so no-one could spoil their enjoyment by texting, tweeting or revealing in an old-fashioned face-to-face conversation the following day, “Did you see that ‘So and So’ fell off the Mumbles Pier in last night’s episode?” which can be so annoying.

Especially for ‘So and So’ if he couldn’t swim….

However, many TV shows fail to grip as tightly.

We’ve all started watching series which were okay at the beginning but lost our interest by episode three.

In my case, it was “Coronation Street”.

Are Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples still having stand-up rows outside the Rovers Return?