Law & Order: UK

Law & Order: UK

ITV1

Mondays, 9pm

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who like shooting people on the Northern Line, and the crown presecutors, who've left your case file on the Piccadilly. These are their stories."

Most of the L&O elements were there: the scene-setting captions (although not enough 'dung dung's), the sarcastic cops walk'n'talking, 30-second interviews with dumpy-looking women... in fact, the producers are currently simply recycling original L&O scripts, tweaked for a London setting, and have cast the same make-up of characters. Harriet Walter takes the S Epatha Merkeson role (DI rather than Lietenant); there's a principled older cop (Brandon Walsh is a little wooden, but it's perhaps unfair to put him up against the late Jerry Orbach) and a younger partner. On the Law side, the set-up's similar, with Freema Agyeman taking the caring woman lawyer position that's been a revolving door role in the US.

There is nothing wrong with this show, but it's just a facsimile. Dick Wolf (is that a compliment or an insult?) has always run L&O as a production line, but at least Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent and even the failed Trial By Jury and Convictions had their own twists. If L&O:UK doesn't start breaking its own trail, does that mean we'll see Bill Paterson make a failed bid to become Prime Minister (as his counterpart Fred Thompson tried for the Presidency last year).