DCI Banks, ITV

Mothers and their sons provided the framework for the latest story involving DCI Alan Banks, the character on whom ITV is pinning its hopes to fill the vacancy of the nation’s favourite detective now that Frost and Morse are no more. Peter Robinson’s series of novels has been enjoyed for more than 25 years, selling millions in the UK and translated into more than 20 languages, but it took until 2010 to reach our television screens with Stephen Tompkinson in the starring role.

In "Wednesday’s Child", based on his 1992 book and the first of six episodes in series three, the focus was on a rough housing estate. Young boys were caught up moving heroin around and, peculiarly, the ice-cream vans were still on the road at midnight. Banks and his team were called in when one of these lads, 11-year-old Kyle, went missing: apparently taken from his house by a man and woman claiming to be social workers. Suspicion fell on his headteacher who admitted to giving Kyle a lift home one night while doing a spot of kerb crawling, and his mother Katy (Christine Bottomley, pictured below) who's been longing for a bit of freedom again.

Searching the house she shares with her son, police dug up the floorboards. Years ago, all that might implicate a young boy in such circumstances might be a girlie mag or two and a secret stash of Curly Wurlies. Not in this world; more like £25,000 worth of drugs. The discovery, along with the chilling find of a boy’s body on the moor, gave the crew at Eastvale nick the licence to delve deeper into the murky world of an estate flooded with drugs. Why was Kyle’s mother meeting the boy’s father in secret above the ice-cream empire he ran? Why was she flirting online with a bloke called Jimmy99 who wanted to rid the estate of evil?

Against this ran a subplot involving DI Helen Morton (Caroline Catz, pictured below) who stepped in as sidekick to Banks in series two, when his regular partner Annie Cabbot was on maternity leave (as was the actress who plays her, Andrea Lowe). Mum-of-four Morton took lots of phone calls about the bad behaviour of one of her sons at school. Did this make her a Bad Mum as well?

The template was there for some cracking TV but somehow it never caught fire. Tompkinson is always good value and the novels work wonderfully well, so what is it? Part of the problem is the shift in dynamics since Morton appeared on the scene. She doesn’t exist in the books and, while Banks plus two feisty females in the office vying for kudos and for his attention might work on paper, in these first two episodes it has felt forced. Banks seems confused, and we feel it as well.

In what amounts to just 90 minutes of drama across the two weeks, there isn’t room to establish all three as distinct characters as well as investigate two serious crimes, to say nothing of the subplot bolted on involving Morton’s boy. And then there’s Banks himself. Robinson, his creator, calls him an "everyman" figure and in print it works a treat. Over 400 pages we slowly learn what makes him tick. On screen though, the lines need to be drawn with greater clarity; Tompkinson is a very good television actor but on this showing it all feels rather flat. 

With two more stories on the way, maybe he’ll come into the foreground; it would certainly help. But where’s Morse when you need him?