Brilliant series. Eight episodes, great acting, damned great acting. I guess when people say “no offence” it’s usually followed by “but” and something rude or offensive, and Mr Abbott is no exception. And so it goes – hahaha, nooo, eurgh, hahaha, not always in that order. To the job then, a refreshingly un-PC Manchester cop shop, where DC Dinah’s boss is DI Vivienne Deering (the very ace Joanna Scanlan) who’s freshening up with sprays – both breath and down there. But she mixes them up, of course … nooo, eurgh, hahaha, give us a kiss, Detective Inspector. DI Deering should nick herself, for stealing the show. Her best line: “They couldn’t find a clit without a search engine.” Abbott has always had an eye for an excellent lady part, so to speak.
The toilet is the place where most of the important stuff takes place – meetings, humour, etc – though for a laugh they go down to the mortuary, where a Chinese woman with a history of bestiality is on the slab, with a small dog stuck down her throat after a car accident. Interesting x-ray. Among all the fun there is actually a case, and a plot. Young women with Down’s syndrome (no, there are no no-go areas for No Offence) are going missing and getting murdered; three so far. Actually two; the third, Cathy, hasn’t got Down’s – “not a mong”, in DI VD’s words. But she was riding up front in a double-decker bus that did an emergency stop, and she ended up with fractures and swellings that DC Dinah mistook for an extra copy of chromosome 21. And if Dinah can make the mistake, who’s to say a serial killer can’t, too?
Anywhere else that No Offence – a title that gathers irony like a snowball as the show rolls on – isn’t afraid to go, on top of masturbation, the toilet, up here, down there, clits, Down’s, death by dog? Well, Deering calls her own boss, Detective Superintendent Darren McLaren, “Obama”, which I believe has less to do with him being the boss and more to do with the colour of his skin. So throw race in there too, why not. To be fair to Deering, there is something of BO about D/Supt DM; he certainly seems to think he’s Potus anyway. “Stand these people down,” he says, whenever he wants to reduce the number of staff on a case. No Offence is bold and rude but not crude. Dark certainly, but also – as you’d expect from Abbott – vibrant, warm, rich and real. And to say it again, after all that black humour, damned serious. No kidding.
(Carefully remixed from the „Daily Telegraph“)