Luther

Fans of grimmer-than-average cop shows will be pleased to know that series three of Luther begins this week (BBC One, Tuesday at 9pm). If you haven’t been tempted by this tough, engrossing detective series, now is as good a time as any to start. Even if the first five minutes of the opening episode are an almost entirely wordless resolution of the cliffhanger at the end of series two.

Once that’s done with though, there’s still time for one of the most profoundly unsettling moments in TV history before the title sequence. And that’s by no means the end of it. This opening episode of the series guarantees our sleeplessness by adding a seriously chilling murder scene and the most distressing method of ‘destroying the evidence’ I think I’ve ever seen.

Despite the uncompromising content, it’s still a great show, largely because of Idris Elba’s performance. He swaggers through every scene with that funny elbows-out walk of his, like Batman with a warrant card. Luther is much more interested in justice than law. Elba has that same two-fisted charisma that John Thaw showed in The Sweeney.

If you need a little levity after that firmness, why not consider a haircut? Quick Cuts (BBC Four, Wednesday at 10pm) is a tremendously silly but well constructed sitcom with a terrific cast. Presiding over that cast, and over the hairdresser’s salon in which Quick Cuts is based, is the towering figure of Doon Mackichan. One of our finest and funniest actors, she’s best known for her work with Chris Morris in the late 1990s and in Smack The Pony a few years back. Quick Cuts is written by Georgia Pritchett, whose credits also include Smack The Pony, but reach out to include… well… almost everything: Miranda, The Thick Of It, My Family even.

It’s cleverly conceived. The lives of the salon’s frankly loopy staff provide a linear sitcom thread but the visiting customers provide scope for micro-sketches to ensure the next laugh is never too far away.

The rest of the cast are uniformly excellent. Lucinda Dryzek and Jess Gunning both appeared in Pritchett’s previous big project, The Life Of Riley. Relative newcomer Jane Dowden plays Marianne, who is somewhere along the gender reassignment road. The script is sensitive about that issue without passing up any laughs that might come from it. Paul Reynolds, who readers of my particular vintage might remember from Press Gang, is one of the show’s few male characters – a feckless, light-fingered fiancé for Mackichan.

Quick Cuts isn’t exactly a family show, but if you’re in the mood for mildly raucous nonsense with a whiff of perming solution, I recommend this salon highly.