ROLAND WHITE reviews Cooper & Fry: Headless corpses? Evil spirits? All in a day’s work for a Peak District cop

When people start a new job in real life, they wait a few days to get used to it. They are on their best behavior and don’t complain that their old place was so much better.

This is the exact opposite of the way things are done on television.

The latest example is Channel 5’s Cooper & Fry, another crime drama that resembles an estate agent firm (see also Scott & Bailey, McDonald & Dodds).

Diane Fry (Mandip Gill) is an ambitious detective police officer who moves from Leeds to the Peak District under mysterious circumstances.

This has something to do with the text messages she received from a stalker named Dave.

Fry is charmless and arrogant, and happily rejects all advances. Unfortunately, he even refuses the cake.

He barely found his new desk at Edendale police station when he worked alongside DC Ben Cooper (Robert James-Collier).

He is a docile, very local boy and – as we later learn – the son of a sergeant who was murdered at the police station. ‘We are a close team here,’ he advises. ‘You might want to make an effort.’

‘I like to keep my work and personal life separate,’ he replies. Arrogant or what?

Many eyebrows are raised by Fry at Cooper’s approach as he investigates the discovery of a body on a remote farm. But it turns out he’s not as smart as he thinks.

‘We don’t want to cause you any trouble,’ he says to the elderly, confused farmer currently in a care home, ‘but did you know that there are human remains buried on your farm?’

No, Officer, he won’t give this poor old man any trouble.

In fact, there were two bodies until then; One had no head, the other had no hands.

So we are thrust into a tale of superstition and folklore involving the ‘Screaming Skull’ that is supposed to drive out evil spirits, tarot cards and a farmer who keeps his brother’s head in a wardrobe.

But the purpose turned out to be much more mundane; The nursing home nurse and her farmer father ran a crystal meth factory.

Just as the killer dad was about to finish off Cooper with his shotgun, he was hit in the back of the head with a wooden plank by Fry, thus solidifying the set for future episodes.

The closing moments lured us in with the promise of more mystery to come. Cooper’s father’s killer was never found. So young Cooper has a wall of evidence in his house.

And the mysterious Dave now threatens to find Fry ‘wherever he is’.

This shouldn’t be too difficult. Especially when all the newspapers are reporting ‘New Arrival Fry helps solve headless body mystery’.