Highlights

* The quality of the talking heads including Eric Richard (Bob Cryer in The Bill), Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield), Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear), Jackie Malton (the real Jane Tennison) and Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows in CSI). The only pointless pontificator was DJ Bobby Friction but at least the show was free of Paul Ross.

• Bob Mills on the Hawaii Five-0 title sequence. “It was the closest any poor northern family got to a drugs trip.”

• Bob Mills on Starsky & Hutch – “They dressed up camply and just when you thought it couldn’t get any camper, along came Huggy Bear.”

• Bob Mills on the ground-breaking Columbo in which the audience knew all along who’d dunnit. “There’s no hint of ‘I wonder if it might have been him’. We’ve done all that for you. All you’ve got to do is enjoy the next hour of virtuoso acting from Peter Falk.”

• The Sweeney’s car chases – and the approval the series gained from the Met Police’s Brian Paddick. “There was a sneaking admiration of what The Sweeney could get away with.”

• Chris ‘Burnside’ Ellison delivering a script that wasn’t peppered with the stupid jokes and ludicrous generalisations that normally mar this type of show.

• The Z Cars theme tune; the Cagney & Lacey theme tune.

• Barbara Bosson talking about the impact of starring in Hill Street Blues. “I grew to know a lot of police officers and was fond of them. In the Sixties, they were hitting me over the head and I was calling them pigs. So I had a real turnaround.”

Lowlights

• The Dixon Of Dock Green clip didn’t feature the old boy saying “Evenin’ all.” Very disappointing.

• The description by a Miami Vice producer of In The Air Tonight as “that won-derful Phil Collins song.”

• The appalling nature of the bad language in NYPD Blue, illustrated by a shocking clip in which Sipowicz shouted at a woman: “You pissy little bitch.”