My first impressions of this Channel 4 programme included some dislike for the senior investigating officer of Operation Fletcher. DCI Hogg seemed altogether too cheery and blasé considering that he was dealing with the burnt body of a young woman who’d clearly died an horrific death, but there he was on the screen grinning while describing the crime.

However, as the programme wore on, I discovered that this is just Jason Hogg’s persona and not intentionally meant to be heartless. In fact, he and his team have a lot of heart, though not of the bleeding, intense kind that we’re used to seeing on TV police dramas.

Nobody on Operation Fletcher was seen overnight in the incident room rifling frustratedly through the files with stubble on his – or indeed, her – chin, complete with rumpled suit and a drawer containing a whisky bottle, but as fiction does of course mirror reality, there were any number of similarities with fictional police shows. Read more & comment »