Where There's Crime, There's Television.

There's scraping the barrel, and then there's ITV. Not content with whoring out our nations lack of talent (not to mention our celebrities lack of celebrity), for the past few years, it now seems to be investing all of its energies into an old favourite at ITV; CRIME.

There has been a noticeable increase in the amount of genuine crud that ITV has shown in recent years, and never has this been more evident than on a Tuesday evening, where it's sole activity is to follow around, and surely hinder, every single aspect of crime fighting that their can possibly be in this country.

Send In The Dogs - yes, all you wanted to know about how dogs are used in crime fighting. Surely all that anyone has ever wanted to know about this grim angle of our police force could be contained on the back of a match box? But no, ITV sees it as pedigree television. Predigree is a word often associated with dogs by the way, but I haven't quite used it in that way, thus creating a pun.

Not content with analysing every molecule of dog-doo in the police force, ITV charge ahead with CAR CRIME UK, a title so brash that it ought to be shouted about eight times at the viewer before the program actually commences, just to frighten them into a full sense of close attention. This of course is the very worst of Americas influence on British television and the show contains more than it's fair share of grainy car chases, serious voice overs (always with a witty retort such as "it looks a life of crime has really taken it's - toll - on this criminal", just as he plummets to a hault at the Dartford Crossing. It's a dirty, smudgy, nightmare of flashing lights. Watching it makes you want to scrape the filth from your eyes, it's like eating gravel. These programmes swallow up your minds-eye view of your community and make you think that you are living underneath a canopy of traffic cones, police brutality and people with blurred out faces wearing trainers.

It is of course, more voyeurism for the avid viewers. Something for the old, stodgy folks of this world to shake a stick and go "fyyeaurgh, yeeeah, gertchya - see love, I told you so din I, din I tell you? This country is going to the fucking dogs". These men probably drive cabs, or distribute beer.

Never fear though, it's not all that bleak! Aware that this kind of line-up might lack some of it's traditionally tacky Hollywood-come-Majorca glamour, ITV jazzes up the proceedings with that age old film-making phrase, "Police, Camera, Action!". If you haven't had enough by this point in the evening then...well, actually, you're a disgusting human being. But, due to the cruel laws of this world, you're in luck, because it seems there is more of the same! At first, this third crime themed programmed appears to be different, presenting us with a cleverly twisted view of our own society, a dystopia where illegal car parts have become the most important things in people's lives and big-brother camera watches with cold sepia vision as the last resonants of humanity duck for cover from their equally dim pursuers known only as, THE POLICE - it's at this point you realise that it's not a dystopia at all, and is of course our own society. Upon this realisation, I would strongly advice cutting your head open and whisking your brain to a soft pulp, so as to better absorb the misery.

And don't try and weasel out of this on the BBC; they're actually just as bad, they've got Crimewatch on the Streets and Neighbourhood Watch. What a fantastically relentless night of televison! Mother's lock up your daughters! And all your precious belongings.