No Offence

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.

Will Mellor's TV CV

Remember Gaz in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps? The Line of Duty and No Offence star has come a long way from small-time sitcoms...

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, episode 2, TV review

Surprisingly syrupy for a show that takes no prisoners.

No Offence: a truly good comedy drama

Set in a Manchester police station, Paul Abbott's No Offence shines with wit and human insight.

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.

Paul Abbott developing No Offence Series 2

Paul Abbott is developing a second series of No Offence as he looks to replicate the success of Shameless, according to the show's executive producer.

No Offence: 'hugely entertaining & wildly unconvincing'

Like all of his work, No Offence zips along with infectious energy and some great jokes. At this stage, however, the cops themselves do seem more recognisable as Paul Abbott characters than as policemen, rather as if the kind of people he usually writes about had unaccountably found themselves running a nick -- or a Spectator competition had asked for a parody of a crime show as Abbott might have written it. The result is a programme that somehow manages to be hugely entertaining and wildly unconvincing at the same time.