CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV

Sparky wheelchair action heroine lifts this clever serial killer thriller: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV

Blindspot

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Joanna Lumley’s Spice Trail Adventure

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Knit one, purl one… kill one. The deadly knitting needle, for so long Miss Marple’s favourite prop, is making a comeback.

Fans of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club yarns will know that one victim gets the needle in a nasty fashion in his latest novel.

And the plans of a masked assassin in Blindspot (Ch5) unravel quickly when heroine Hannah (Beth Alsbury) defends herself with a knitting needle plunged into his jugular.

Moments earlier, the chunky pin was being wielded by Hannah’s cleaner to knit a pink pullover for her Yorkshire terrier. Suddenly it was a lethal weapon, and Hannah was dripping in gore like the survivor of a chainsaw massacre.

Alsbury, a recent graduate of Rada in her first TV role, is easily the best thing about this nonsensical but fun thriller. She plays a sparky, flirty young woman who spends her hours as a council CCTV operator by zooming in to ogle the fittest lads.

Beth Alsbury plays council CCTV operator Hanna, while Ross Kemp plays a despondent detective in Blindspot (Ch5)

Inevitably, while she’s admiring a nice pair of biceps, camera three spies what she believes to be a murder. But when the police arrive, there’s no body.

Hannah has already survived one late-night attack, on her way home from a club. Now she is convinced the same man has struck again — but the police won’t take her seriously.

That’s a strong, simple plot, but much of the supporting story doesn’t quite make sense. There’s a corrupt city councillor (Michelle Bonnard), running for re-election and desperate to hush up the existence of a serial killer in case it costs her votes.

And Ross Kemp plays a detective so despondent that he refuses to look inside a bin, even when Hannah urges that there could be a body in there.

Mind you, maybe that’s not so unlikely, given that a police officer this week declined to respond to reports of a fight outside a Sussex supermarket because then he’d ‘have to deal with it’.

Hannah isn’t able to check the bin herself because she uses a wheelchair. She’s still an action heroine, a twist that ensures this drama is never mundane. Written by Rob Kinsman, it is full of clever touches that highlight her mobility problems without being preachy — including a moment of clammy panic when Hannah can’t escape an attacker because the front door is bolted at the top…

Joanna Lumley recounted even gorier murders, with heads stuck on spikes like 10ft knitting needles, as she explored Indonesia in her Spice Trail Adventure (ITV1).

She was searching for nutmeg, once one of the world’s most valuable commodities, supposedly a cure for bubonic plague and still rumoured to be an essential ingredient in Coca-Cola.

Joanna Lumley follows the legendary spice trail to discover the rich tapestry of flavours and cultures which have shaped our world in Joanna Lumley’s Spice Trail Adventure (ITV1)

Nutmeg trees flourish on the volcanic soil of the Banda Islands and if, like me, you imagined the spice grew in powdered form ready to be decanted into glass pots, the reality was a revelation.

Dame Joanna harvested the pods with a wicker contraption like a lamplighter’s pole, extracted the conker-sized seeds, and roasted them slowly until they were bone dry. Then she ate one, like a gobstopper. Whether nutmeg really has aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic properties as the islanders claim, she didn’t say.

She did try a Kretek cigarette, though, tobacco flavoured with cloves. And in Jakarta she visited a cocktail bar before dancing in the street with buskers to Indonesian pop.

Wherever she went, she seemed thrilled to meet everyone, from the raucous boys of a junior football team to the delivery driver who invited her to fondle his wooden gearstick in the shape of a snake.

Her enthusiasm is infectious, so that people find they are excited to meet her — which makes for lively, friendly travel.

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