Vincent - A Beginners Guide to Detectiving

I recorded an episode of Vincent, knowing little more about it other than it featured a team of private investigators.

It turned out to be a 2005 programme starring Ray Winstone. Had I known that I might not have recorded it. I like Ray Winstone, but find a little of him goes a long way. Suranne Jones is also in it - I've met her in real-life (she wouldn't remember because it wasn't a particularly memorable event and she was drunk) and she is actually alot prettier than she looks on television as her face is often contorted in scenes of Northern misery.

The episode (which I find out later is the last one of the first series) could be divided into two distinct parts. For the first part, the team are hired to follow a man whose wife believes he is cheating on her. What we see is very much the nuts and bolts of how you go about spying on someone, which with my long-harboured desire to be a detective, I found fascinating.

Then the plot takes a turn, and the woman the husband was cheating with, becomes the focus of the investigation, requiring Vincent to go undercover to seduce her. It came more pyschological and switches to being a guide to what not to do as a detective, namely get yourself personally involved with suspect. This part involved Ray Winstone being very Ray Winstone, and lots of agonising face-twisting from Suranne. But I was gripped, and then hugely disappointed to find it wasn't on again.