MATTHEW Wright's TV WEEK: Here's why Robson is just a little Green

I'M not easily shocked. I'm broadminded in fact, and believe passionately that if anything on TV needs censoring we should do it ourselves by pressing the Off button.

So Robson Green should be congratulated. His latest ITV1 drama Wire In The Blood (Thursday) was shocking in every respect and yet not once did I reach for the remote control.

A sick bucket might have been more use though.

For those who don't know Val McDermid's novels, your main man is Dr Tony Hills, a brilliant criminal psychologist, so hung up on getting inside psycho paths' heads that his best friend is the female equivalent of Hannibal Lecter.

That's not the only comparison I could draw between Wire In The Blood and other hit thrillers. Hills, you could say, is what you get if Cracker went crackers.

Robson demonstrates this by talking nonsense, writhing on the ground and bobbing his head like it was on a spring.

Despite looking like he needs help rather than giving it, as he leaves work Hills is approached by icy-cool detective DI Carol Jordan, played by magnetic Hermione Norris of Cold Feet fame.

He can't get into his car though, because he's lost his keys. What a silly billy.

"They're in the car," she points out to the flustered shrink. Got it yet? This doctor is really scatty! But beneath this fragile exterior is a man whose knowledge of the criminal mind is second to none. Just as well because the killer he's brought in to catch by (the obligatory) bungling cops has to rate as the sickest TV psycho yet.

He preys on single men, possibly single gay men, and when he gets hold of them he does things to them that would be inappropriate to detail in a family newspaper. Censorship? Maybe.

Then again do you really want me to tell you what the killer did to his victims with a conical stone, covered in electro-conductive metal paper and then wrapped with multiple strands of barbed wire? No, I thought not. However, director Andrew Grieve thought otherwise and viewers were treated to more information than any viewer, other than those in Rampton, needed for dramatic effect.

And that's the problem. This is a far sicker killer thriller than any I have encountered before. It was OTT in almost every respect - and yet I watched every second.

TV bosses are roundly attacked for dumbing down, going for the shock horror factor, so should they be condemned for Wire In The Blood? Well, yes and no. The graphic way the murders were detailed in this drama was done to shock, to mesmerise - and it did. But it was no worse than some of the gory flicks that have earned millions in cinemas. And as so many of us watch those movies of our own free will, you can't blame TV for trying to catch up.

At least the torture featured in Wire In The Blood - the killer is set on dragging medieval methods of inflicting pain into the 21st Century - fulfilled its purpose.

I wanted the sicko caught as much as the cops. And despite some corny lines, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute in the company of Dr Hills and DI Jordan, including Robson's cliched craziness.

Story one, The Mermaid's Singing, concludes on Thursday on ITV1. Two more two-part cases for Hills and Jordan are still to come.

Better get a bucket.

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