The new Rian Johnson drama Poker Face (Sky Max and Now) stars the charismatic Natasha Lyonne as a Columbo-like human lie detector who is on the run and hence travels the United States solving murders along the way. It’s great. A compelling protagonist going from town to town solving crimes is my favourite TV trope, and there haven’t been enough shows doing this recently. Here are some standouts from the genre.
Scooby-Doo
Some social history for young people: in the 1960s, American teens hit the highway in a psychedelic van to solve crimes with a terrified gluttonous talking dog. Sometimes it wasn’t a talking dog. Sometimes it was a thawed-out military caveman. (I don’t know how exactly the caveman was a “captain”; he just was.) This was called the “counterculture”, and it was much better than spending all of your time on the phone participating in capitalism.
We all picked a team. Some of us were Team Talking Dog. Some of us were Team Military Caveman. We would watch them and scream and faint. Soon the US was filled with vans full of hip but pesky kids snooping around haunted fairgrounds alongside uncanny mascots (funky phantoms, talking sharks).
The Scooby-Doo crew included all four types of young people – a jock, a nerd, a hot girl and a dirty filthy hippy – in addition to the eponymous quivering canine, who was, frankly, no help. In later episodes they were joined by his violent jabbermouthed nephew Scrappy-Doo, whose very presence, like that of my terrible nephews, made Scooby seem like an incoherent coward. It was disrespectful. I don’t consider these episodes canon. Scooby-Doo and Shaggy are now senior executives at Shell.
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Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
Highway to Heaven
Jonathan Smith (Michael Landon) was an earthbound angel with a lovely mullet who had been sent by his boss, God, to wander the earth helping the needy alongside a bearded man in a trucker’s hat. Highway to Heaven was on a Sunday and was basically the same as Mass, but my parents made me go to Mass anyway, so double Mass.
The Incredible Hulk
David “Bruce” Banner (Bill Bixby) was a middle-aged man with no friends who changed colour and turned into a different person when angry. We all have an uncle like this. Because of his rage-filled actions, poor Banner was being pursued from town to town by the security forces. We all have an uncle like this too. At the end of each episode he would sling his bag on his back and walk out of town while a melancholy piano theme played. This piece of music is called The Lonely Man, and I play it on a little tape recorder every time I leave a room.
The A-Team (Yelp review)
“If you have a problem and no one else can help ... you can hire the A-Team” went the ad. I needed some light gardening done, so I made contact with the A-Team via a bearded man who was clearly someone in a disguise. A van pulled up and four men jumped out. There was a man in a safari suit chomping on a cigar. He appeared to be the leader, and he was very smug. There was a man bedecked in jewellery who kept complaining about air travel and “fools”. Even if I changed the subject he’d keep bringing the conversation back to “fools” and the pity he felt for them. There was also a traumatised man with verbal tics who probably should have been in a mental-health institution, as well as a man with a human face called, appropriately, Face.
Anyway, they didn’t help with my gardening issues at all but instead joined forces with the small rural logging community I was destroying due to a sweet business deal I was doing. They customised their van and started shooting at me and my goons repeatedly with automatic weapons. Thankfully I was not hurt. Three stars. (In fairness, they were punctual.)
Fortycoats & Co
Fortycoats was a bearded man who travelled from place to place in an air-bound tuck shop with his nominatively determined sidekicks Slightly Bonkers and Sofar Sogood. I’m not sure who or what Fortycoats was running from, but given that he was an eccentric character in a flying box accompanied by younger companions, it was either the police or Doctor Who’s lawyers. In most episodes he (the patriarchy) would descend from the sky to battle his nemesis, Wilhelmina, the Whirligig Witch (feminism). But the bit that speaks to me most nowadays is the fact he’s a bearded man who feels the cold and lives in a house filled with snacks.
Murder, She Wrote
I write frequently about the mystery novelist and chirpy harbinger of death Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury). But her joyful stoicism in the face of what is, even by the standards of this listicle, an unrelenting tsunami of murder should really be an inspiration to us all. If only everyone were so insouciant in the face of death.
Poirot
Like Jessica Fletcher, ITV/Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot (David Suchet) travelled all over the place unmasking nefarious killers. As he did so he wowed all with his stylish moustache and spats. Poirot was originally a refugee escaping war (his Poirogin story?*), so nowadays he would probably be surrounded by digitally radicalised mugs waving Irish flags and shouting. * My brother-in-law’s joke. Blame him
The Littlest Hobo
The Littlest Hobo was not a teensy man with a ripped hat and a bindle but a dog with a tendency to meddle. He would arrive into town, spot a problem and instantly set to fixing it – crime, a child stuck down a well, a best man’s speech. He even had a catchphrase. “Woof,” he would say, which translates roughly as: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” (The Littlest Hobo was made in Canada.)
There were other crime-solving animals in those days, but they were really just rip-offs in which the creators would try to invent new kinds of dog. Skippy, for example, was a “jump dog” (they call this type of dog a “kangaroo”) and Flipper was a “swim dog” (they call this type of dog a “dolphin”). Some people say that Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and Flipper preceded The Littlest Hobo by more than a decade, but those people think time is linear. I pity those fools.
Room to Improve
Like a cross between the Incredible Hulk and the Littlest Hobo, Dermot Bannon – the Architecturiest – roams our land solving architectural crimes. Thankfully he has not yet been wearied by the evils of this world (contextless Georgian pillars/tarmacadamed gardens/south-facing walls with no windows/stone-effect cladding) and so continues on his quest to find the perfect extension, which is, of course, paradise (depending on your heritage: Valhalla/Tír na nÓg/Supermac’s). Some day he will stumble upon this magical place and his wandering will cease. Until then we must sing together his unending hymn of praise: “Maybe tomorrow, I’ll wanna settle down, until tomorrow I’ll just keep moving on.”
