I love the telly, ‘cos it makes me laugh. The devices they use to enable quick resolution of a plot, which they then DON’T use in later episodes because they need to string things out. And other foibles. For example, a recently bought laptop has a geolocator in it, so they can find it in seconds. Next week, they can’t even open its hard drive. This week facial recognition works on a blurry pic, next week a perfect resolution shot baffles the system. And DNA can be done in a minute, not to mention (a personal favourite) a quick telephone call from NCIS to get a bug in a Mosque – I’d love to see the paperwork needed to get THAT done in less than ‘ever’.

This week, I watched an action programme I won’t be watching again. The good guy had one hour to get from an office in central Las Vegas to kill the bad guy. The lift would’ve taken 20 minutes to get to the front door of the skyscraper he was in, for a start. Never mind his lack of available transport. They also glossed over the fact that when the hour was set they had no idea where the bad guy actually was. Strike 1.

That wasn’t the whole howler for that episode. There was the bit when the ever-present access-from-anywhere CCTV hacked into by the goodies said, “They’re heading south on the Strip!” with a bleeping blob where they were – well south of Las Vegas. Good guy set off and caught up with them at Fremont Street (the famous part of old LV where they filmed the car chase in Diamonds Are Forever) – which is NORTH, and completely the other side of the city. Strike 2.

Final nail in that coffin was when the good guy got the the aforementioned unknown airfield, where bad guy was taking off in a decommissioned C130 Hercules transport plane, built in the 60s-70s would be my guess. Pre-internet/Wi-Fi. Good guy’s IT woman said, “I can’t get into the telemetry to switch it off, but I can get into the hydraulics’, so she opened the door for good guy to run up to the moving ‘plane, and jump on.

Telemetry – implies ‘transmission of data’. Hydraulic systems are independent units with fluid controlled operating systems. How the hell could she NOT do ‘telemetry’ but COULD do hydraulics? Even assuming she could do either? Strike 3.

(Not to mention how Good Guy shot the pilot dead and then bad guy jumped out with the only parachute, so good guy jumped out after him. Me, I’d have got in the pilot seat and hit bad guy with the ‘plane, then landed it with ATC assistance……)

I know that this is all cobblers, really I do. But my experience in the police shows that the general public actually believes this stuff is do-able, so when I can’t detect their crime in 20 minutes, including ads for a cuppa, they go all ballistic on me. And given HM Government’s belief that a computer-centred enquiry can be done with a 28-day bail period indicates that they have been watching the same programmes, where Good Guy deals with one thing at a time and concludes it (a) quickly and (b) before other problems arise.

On the other hand, I do laugh at these script devices, and that is something.

Now, is the ‘Detect Crime’ button to the left or right of ‘Ctrl’?……