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How the Pandemic Stalled Peak TV
Standing in stark contrast to the likes of Bloodlands, there’s both a lightness of touch and a neat precision to ITV’s chalk-and-cheese crime drama
The likable odd-couple crime series McDonald & Dodds (ITV) is back for a second run. For audiences watching the old-fashioned way, as it is broadcast on television, it could not stand as more of a contrast to BBC One’s Bloodlands, its main opponent in the schedules. This is British crime drama with a cartoonish glow and it is practically allergic to bleakness.
“I never go anywhere without my latex gloves,” says DS Dodds, played by Jason Watkins. If Watkins had delivered that sentence in Line of Duty, in which he played the doomed Tim Ifield, it would have been chilling. Here, it is an endearing character quirk.
