Paul Abbott

We're at the halfway point in Paul Abbott's smart cop drama and tonight the Friday Street law enforcers are on the trail of a gang conning the hard-up into selling their kidneys on the black market. The female leads utterly make this, giving Abbott's zappy dialogue true heart and humanity. That said, if we could just pop a moratorium on dead-girl victims in all TV drama for a year, that would be great. The unending parade of throttled, hacked women in canals - continued here - needs to stop.

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?"

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No Offence review

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Review: No Offence, Channel 4

There's been much hullabaloo surrounding the new series from Paul Abbott - and with good reason.