Just when it seemed British telly would never crack down on novelty cop shows with twee titles (Rosemary & Thyme, Blue Murder) and far-out gimmicks (Life on Mars’ time-travel, Luther’s genius detective), two sharp new dramas arrive to slap the genre about.

Father & Son (ITV1, Monday, 7 June, 9pm), by the late Irish writer Frank Deasy, is street-smart and compelling.

© ITV plc

 
Dougray Scott plays Michael O’Connor, former drug/robbery gang leader who’s living quietly in Ireland with his pregnant partner after a long spell inside.

Manchester’s mean streets

He is pulled back to his old Manchester stamping ground when his innocent 15-year-old son, Sean (Reece Noi), is caught up in a gun feud and charged with murder. Michael’s horrendous dilemma is that he may not be able to prevent his and Sean’s lives being destroyed by implacable forces from his old life.

Frank Deasy, who was just 50 when he died of liver cancer last year, had form as a writer of powerful crime drama, with credits including Prime Suspect: The Final Act (for which he picked up an Emmy).

This new drama’s strength is that it is about characters, not plot twists. Dougray Scott, seen recently in Day of the Triffids, has the heavy brow and lined faced to be believable as tough but worried Michael. In one affecting scene he looks round his estranged son’s bedroom, the sadness of his attempt to get acquainted with the teenager he barely knows etched on those features.

Also starring Sophie Okonedo, Stephen Rea and Ian Hart, Father & Son will be shown over four consecutive nights and is well worth catching.

And respect to cash-strapped ITV for proving they’re not just peddlers of reality pap.

Coming Soon – ITV1’s Identity

The channel’s other intriguing debut series is Identity, written by Ed Whitmore, which stars Aidan Gillen and Keeley Hawes, recent escapees from The Wire and Ashes to Ashes.

Can’t reveal too much about this six-parter as it’s embargoed till next month, but I have seen the pilot and found it chilling while refreshingly free of serial killers and paedophiles – and novelty cops. Gillen is very good as a detective fighting identity theft. More later…

Party Pooper

Before that, Radio 4 steps back in time for a classic drawing-room mystery, JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (Saturday, 29 May, 2.30pm). It’s an atmospheric retelling of the slightly contrived yarn, but still fun. An engagement party in the home of midlands industrialist Arthur Birling is interrupted by an Inspector Goole, who has news of a horrible suicide that touches everyone present.

Radio sometimes allows you to savour characters more than the Box, and David Calder as snob patriarch Birling is particularly juicy here. Frances Barber plays his wife, and Toby Jones is a suitably ghoulish Goole.

Then on Bank Holiday Monday Anton Lesser reads the first part of Priestley’s wartime thriller Blackout in Gretley (Book at Bedtime, 10.45pm).

Left his wife tied to the bed all day…

But the most fascinating radio offering is Norman Birkett and the Case of the Coleford Poisoner (Tuesday, 1 June, 2.15pm). It’s a dramatisation of a true case involving Norman Birkett KC (1883-1962), a barrister who worked on some of the most lurid stories of his day.

Here, he defends Annie Pace, accused of murdering her rather vile husband. Harry would go out all day and leave Annie tied to a bedpost, attack her with a hatchet and bash her dog’s head in. But according to the law, that was no excuse for murder. How Birkett (played by David Haig) tackles the prejudices and legal strictures of the time is an engrossing tale.

Dramatised by Caroline and David Stafford, this is the first of an occasional series.

Kelly’s Hero

Late bit of news – ITV1 has commissioned a third series of Above Suspicion, the Lynda La Plante franchise starring Kelly Reilly and Ciarán Hinds. Fans will have to wait till next year to see it.

Clearly many viewers loved this. Personally, I found Kelly’s pouting, short-skirted, sashaying murder ’tec as believable as Charles Hawtrey leading a commando unit.