Shouting at the Dead

The 20 most used words in the English language are as follows:

the, of, to, and, a, in, is, it, you, that, he, was, for, on, are, with, as, I, his, they

But if you are Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd of 'Waking the Dead', you could probably add 'Spence' to that list.

He's hardly on screen a minute without hollering the name of his long-suffering colleague, Spencer Jordan. Boyd is one angry man - I'm unsure of whether it is the character or if that is Trevor Eve's only style of acting - whatever it is, poor Spence seems to bare the brunt of it. The others in the team are snapped at certainly, but the most shouted name by a mile is Spence.

We've been re-watching selected episodes of the third series this week and I wish I'd been keeping a tally of how many times he's shouted 'Spence'. And if I'd had a pound for every time, I'd easily have enough to buy the boxset of the fourth series.