CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: A brush with the law on Britain’s biggest beat 

Highland Cops

Rating:

Con Or Cure 

Rating:

PC Joan MacIver cleans up crime on her remote rural beat. She doesn’t go anywhere without her broom.

Prior to the police documentary Highland Cops (BBC2) (first shown in Scotland last Sunday) all most of us knew of crime prevention on the west coast of Scotland came from Hamish Macbeth, the cosy mystery series from the mid-1990s, starring Robert Carlyle.

Hamish was quite forgettable, unlike British horror classic The Wicker Man, the 1973 movie starring Edward Woodward as a police sergeant on a Hebridean island. He ends up a human sacrifice, burned alive in a pagan ritual.

You’d think that’s enough to put most people off a career in the Highlands and Islands force. PC Joan is made of stronger stuff. ‘I feel like I’ve won the lottery,’ she enthuses, as she races to another job with sirens screaming.

PC Sam McFadyen, Sgt Gordon Gray, PC Nathan Rhind in the police documentary Highland Cops (BBC2)

‘The scenery is amazing, and it’s just a wonderful place to work. Old-school community policing, that’s the dream for me.’

PC Joan’s emergency was a fallen tree. First reports suggested it had brought down an electricity pylon, but that was a slight exaggeration. As far as I could see, it left a telegraph pole a bit wonky.

But there were branches on the road, and Scotland’s most conscientious copper wasn’t having that. From the boot of her patrol car, out came a hard hat, and a broom with yellow bristles. The broom head was brand-new, she said approvingly.

Later, she drove for an hour in a downpour to sweep some stones off the road through Glencoe. It’s a good job most of the trees on her patch — Britain’s biggest — are evergreens, because I suspect she’d hand out on-the-spot fines for fallen leaves.

Glencoe, where the Campbells once slaughtered the MacDonald clan, was the scene of a more serious suspected crime. PC Stephen Cooper was called out to a campsite, where the driver of a motorhome claimed he’d been shot at with a .22 rifle on the road. The bullet shattered a side window.

Prior to the police documentary Highland Cops, all most of us knew of crime prevention on the west coast of Scotland came from Hamish Macbeth

PC Stephen took his statement and examined the broken glass. He couldn’t find any evidence of a gunshot, and tentatively suggested that a stone thrown up by a tyre might have done the damage.

The holidaymaker wasn’t having that. ‘It’s not the usual friendly Highland welcome,’ PC Stephen conceded. ‘I’m hoping there’s not going to be any more massacres.’

Crimes that are less easily swept aside were highlighted by Dr Xand van Tulleken and Ashley John-Baptiste on Con Or Cure (BBC1), their morning magazine on health issues.

One interviewee, 46-year-old Michael Brown from Basingstoke, told how he almost lost access to his baby daughter after his ex-partner ordered fake DNA results through a scam website, claiming he was not the biological father.

The woman pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and was jailed for a year — but the website is still online. Ashley sent off for a certificate citing Dr Xand as his father, a prank that sets the tone for this show — it wants to be Watchdog but feels more like outtakes from That’s Life.

Crimes that are less easily swept aside were highlighted by Dr Xand van Tulleken and Ashley John-Baptiste on Con Or Cure (BBC1)

Serious issues were raised, though, in a report on asbestos in public buildings such as hospitals and schools. Asbestos dust is responsible for 2,700 cancer cases a year — a toll one doctor compared to the annual sinking of two Titanics.

Like PC Joan, the presenters swiftly brushed over that and moved on to the pressing question of whether to eat food that has fallen on the floor.

Dropping a piece of fruit, Dr Xand examined it under ultraviolet light. ‘I would say that is a heavily contaminated banana,’ he opined. Thank you, doctor.