Joanna Scanlan

Where is Patrick getting his information from? Viv (Joanna Scanlan) wants to know, but she won't act until she's sure the leak is coming from inside her own department. There's been a shooting on a bridge: a surgeon taken out by a sniper while jogging. But as the team start hunting the shooter, Viv and Dinah (Elaine Cassidy) sneak around doing their own digging. And the ongoing murder investigation finally throws up a shocking breakthrough that leaves Viv reeling and completely losing her usual composure. Not for long, though. God, Viv's the best.

Hard-as-nails women, smart dialogue and a good dose of dark humour have become this police drama's calling cards. Tonight's installment sees DI Deering (Joanna Scanlan) on a manhunt through Manchester as she gets closer to discovering the identity of the serial killer. Few things are more fearsome than the brassy boss on your criminal tail. Meanwhile Joy (Alexandra Roach) and Spike (Will Mellor) are dealing with a violent attack on a young homeless man, which leads them to uncover a disturbing case of slavery.

Radio Times review

No one can resist the beady stare of implacable DI Viv Deering (Joanna Scanlan); just watch a hapless community police officer crumble in front of her laser beams.

The hunt for the serial murderer of women with Down's syndrome looks like it's drawing to a close in this frantic, febrile drama, until a new and deeply unpleasant line of inquiry comes to light. It's something that makes life even more uncomfortable for Viv and her sidekick Dinah (Elaine Cassidy) because it strikes too close to home.

Meanwhile thwarted Spike (Will Mellor), furious that he missed a huge detail, becomes too involved with a vulnerable, bullied young man and his boss, a thuggish scrapyard owner.

Radio Times review

Great crimes come to light from the most unlikely beginnings in Paul Abbott's fearsomely flinty crime drama, as Detective Constable Dinah Kowalska discovers, lurching to a stop on the drive to work - a pedestrian appears deliberately to have walked in front of a car.

But as Dinah and her team prepare to deal with the brutal realities of a sudden death when they visit the victim's family, they uncover something much bigger - an illegal trade in human organs.

Someone's targeting people in desperate debt, and persuading them that the best way to settle up is by selling their kidneys. It's a huge case with enormous implications, but the cops run straight at it, at the same time as they pursue the serial killer who's targeting women with Down's syndrome.

And the boss, Detective Inspector Viv Deering (Joanna Scanlan) has other problems when her partner turns up drunk in the cells.

Paul Abbott's police procedural continues with an episode that finds racial tensions simmering. It's all because of an attack on an Asian woman that appears to have been racially motivated. Will an undercover operation bring a suspect to justice? Meantime, DI Viv Deering (played by Joanna Scanlan as a kind of gruff-but-sensitive auntie) and her team are back on the serial killer investigation. This takes on new urgency because psychologist Dr Peep (Kate O'Flynn) thinks the murderer may strike again.

Radio Times review

There's something so delightfully mischievous about No Offence, a hybrid of creator Paul Abbott's Shameless and Tony Garnett's gritty The Cops. It knows it's rude and unruly, but it just doesn't care.

As the hunt for the serial killer of women with Down's syndrome chugs along in the background, DI Viv Deering's tumultuous team of detectives, including Will Mellor as the keen DC Spike Tanner, is investigating the murder of a young Asian woman. She's been killed in an arson attack, and suspicion falls squarely on a group of vociferous, shaven-headed racists.

The subject matter is touchy (and becomes increasingly so as the plot bends), but episode writer Paul Tomalin resolutely doesn't bury us in cliché, turning the story on its head while encouraging us to laugh at the stag-night antics of a particularly gormless fascist buffoon.

We're also given a peek into Viv's (Joanna Scanlan) home life, which provides at least one of the episode's surprises.

Episode two of Paul Abbott's police procedural and, having lost the serial-killer investigation to another team, DI Viv Deering (Joanna Scanlan) and her team instead target an illegal drugs factory. Meantime, attack survivor Cathy is staying at the home of DC Dinah Kowalska (Elaine Cassidy). Early days, of course, but this is shaping up to be something special, thanks to a combo of memorable characters, clever plotting and terrific one-liners. A suspect critiques Viv's approach to interrogation: "Where were you trained, Currys?"

Radio Times review

Never play a practical joke on the fearsome Detective Inspector Vivienne Deering (brilliant Joanna Scanlan) because you will rue the day. Just watch as she almost takes flight from a massage table when she and her young oppo Dinah Kowalska have a spa day. Kowalska, who speaks fluent Polish, has a little word with a masseuse, just for a laugh. The results are hilarious and a tiny bit frightening.

This is a necessary bit of pampering as the two women take a short break from their hunt for the serial killer of Down's syndrome women. There are other problems on their raw Manchester neighbourhood, too - young men are turning up dead, as the result of a bad batch of drugs, currently being manufactured in a respectable-looking suburban semi.

Everything is done at a breathless pace, but it's worth taking a little time to appreciate the great Paul Ritter as a clever cop.

Joanna Scanlan is one of the best things on British TV

From jobsworth Terri in The Thick of It to no-nonsense police officer in No Offence, Scanlan is one of our funniest and most convincing actors - even if she doesn't quite realise it...

No Offence is Paul "Shameless" Abbott's not-at-all-for-everyone but deeply funny take on that most perilous of portmanteaus, the police comedy. It's done splendidly in America's Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but there played mainly for laughs. Here, it's more serious - can't get much more cloacal than a serial murderer targeting Down's syndrome girls in rainy Manc - and the humour is more staccato and scatological. A terrific Joanna Scanlan is unapologetically, vividly, chunky, sweaty and sweary, and deeply real - in that one can, simultaneously, laugh, sympathise and do a little sickie in one's own mouth when her DI character very publicly spritzes with, in turn, breath spray and vaginal deodorant, then announces an urgent loo visit because she got the two mixed up. Elaine Cassidy as Dinah, the Polish-descended DC, is in possession of the cojones, and what passes in that world for the glamour. If Abbott's tricksy thinking, to have a deep vein of below-skirt humour mesh with an otherwise bleak-indeed crime drama, is to be fully realised - and I think it is - these two alone look to be a dream pairing.