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Ajar front door in TV crime show nothing suspicious


In a first for TV police and crime dramas, a slightly ajar front door confronting nervous police officers as they arrive at the house of their prime suspect has turned out to be absolutely nothing suspicious at all. 


A genuinely innocent oversight on the part of the criminal to close their front door when they went in to their house, is thought to have occurred in season 7, episode 12 of the popular police procedural The Thin Blue Line of Duty.


'Me and my new partner Mike - a wet behind the ears recent police graduate recruit who is very nervous on his first day on the beat but whose dad was a legendary old school copper who bent the rules but got results - turned up at the door of Brian BigLord, a notorious drugs baron after a tip off about a domestic, and on knocking on the door, immediately clocked that the door creaked slightly open and hadn't been shut properly', said Shelly McBride, a sassy, streetwise and sharp-talking WPC who doesn't take any shit in the still male-dominated local station where she works. 


'We gave each other a knowing glance, and then assumed our standard acting positions to enter the house - me in front with my truncheon out, Mike behind, covering me as I pushed the door fully open and tiptoed in, fully expecting a chaotic scene of carnage inside, with bodies and blood everywhere', continued McBride. 


'But then Brian Biglord comes to the door and says 'Oh hi, I must have forgot to shut this properly when I brought the big Aldi shop in from the car a few minutes ago. Thanks a lot. Now what can I do yous for? Fancy a cuppa? Lisa, its the local coppers - put the kettle on, lovely will you?'


'That just tops a confounding week for me', said McBride. 'Yesterday, I went to a suspect's house, and for the first time ever, sent a colleague round the back of the house to keep guard before I knocked on the front door.'


'When the suspect inevitably tried to scarper out the back when they saw it was the police, we were right there to nick him without having to do a 10 minute chase through a load of gardens, and where he knocks over a load of bins right into my path to slow me down just enough so he has time to climb over a large wall and then laugh at me as I get stuck at the top of it and he makes his escape'. 


'And a couple of days ago, I noticed a car driving slowly past my house multiple times with 2 blokes looking closely in and pointing at me quite menacingly, accompanied by some scary background music. I confronted them and it turns out they were looking to buy a three bedroom house in the area. My house had been up on the market for ages, but these guys have just put in an offer of the full asking price. Result'.      


TV first as pathologist gives precise time of death



A pathologist in a TV detective series has, for the first time ever, given an absolutely precise time of death for a victim when asked at the crime scene by a pushy detective, it emerged today. The news come after nearly 10,000 episodes of dramas in which the pathologist, busying himself looking over a body, and obviously irritated by people contaminating his crime scene, has, when asked the question ‘Do we know the time of death yet?’, responded with ‘It’s far too early to tell, I’ll know more back at the lab.’


‘Dead easy this one’, said Richard McBride, a chirpy pathologist, within three minutes of the opening episode of Waking Vera’s Witness on ITV. ‘Checked body temperature, compared to norms for someone this size and age, factored in the outside temperature. Oh and he was watching the football on his phone and when he fell over after being hit on the head by someone, his body must have accidentally pressed a screenshot saying 8.26 p.m. So, time of death was 8.26 p.m.'


When asked about the cause of death, McBride was equally emphatic. ‘Definitely that hammer over there’, he said, triumphantly pointing at the blunt-ended instrument protruding from some undergrowth. ‘Look, there’s a big hammer type wound on his head, and, well, the hammer is right there with some blood on it, so I’m calling it, ok. Anything else you guys need?’


McBride confirmed that no, he didn’t need to run toxicology reports that would take two days to come back and reveal some anomalies, nor did he need to look under fingernails for signs of a fight, or check for any pre-existing conditions that might cause the victim to fall over after being dizzy and cast some doubt on the obvious explanation about 40 minutes into the show.


‘Right, if you pick him up by the legs, I’ll get his arms and we can take him back in your Landrover to save time’, said McBride to the DCI. ‘Pick up that hammer and chuck it in your boot too, will you? I’ve pinged over my report to you already. God, let’s get out of here, I’m going to throw up otherwise. I hate the sight of blood, don’t you?’.



First published 10 Sep 2021


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