The enjoyable new BBC1 drama, The Turkish Detective, is a cosy crime caper about a London cop who joins a police department in Istanbul in order to speak English at people and investigate cosy murders. He does things by the book while his new colleagues are devil-may-care mavericks who smoke oldfangled cigarettes and do deals with local mobsters. He is, in dramatic terms, a fish out of water.
Beverly Hills Cop is also about a fish out of water: a Detroit cop who ends up solving crime in LA. Its new sequel Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Netflix) is about a fish-out-of-water cop from the 1980s grappling with 21st-century streaming platforms whilst dreaming of Cabbage Patch Kids and Reaganomics. Literal fish-out-of-water dramas, as fish sadists among you will know, are short and sadly predictable. But figurative fish-out-of-water dramas are back and they are great fun altogether. Here are my favourites:
Poirot: a prim, moustachioed Belgian refugee (David Suchet) who stays in nice English hotels and solves murders wherever he goes, despite the condescension of the locals. The more modern adaptations of Poirot wonder if perhaps Poirot’s tendency to find murder wherever he goes is a projection of his war-inflected PTSD. They like to engage in painful flashbacks that my sister-in-law calls Poirigins. The ghost of Agatha Christie says: “Stop that this instant. Poirot is untroubled by all the death he has seen. He is a funny man with a strange accent and silly moustache who stays in nice hotels and solves murders. That is enough.” You tell him, Agatha Christie!
[ Agatha Christie: genius or hack? Crime writers pass judgment and pick favouritesOpens in new window ]
Death in Paradise: the most popular UK TV show by far (seriously). It involves an ever-changing roster of British (and one Irish) policemen who are sent to a Caribbean island to solve a violent epidemic of cosy murders because the British invented cosy murder and cosy murder investigation and really know how to spice up a postmortem with a nice cup of tea. The murders are, indeed, brutally cosy but the detective finds the heat something shocking. That’s basically the detective’s personality – sweaty discomfort – and frankly, like Poirot’s moustache, it’s enough.
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Doctor Odyssey’s core message: just imagine Pacey from Dawson’s Creek holding you tight and saying, ‘Shhh, it’s okay’
Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
Life on Mars: An enlightened policeman from the ultra-modern noughties (John Simm) is mysteriously sent back in time to do old-school, Sweeney-style policework in the sexist, violent, unreconstructed 1970s. As high-concept cop shows went, it was funny, stylish and strangely moving. It may, in fact, have been too much fun, inspiring Brexit and the British nation’s subsequent reversion to gritty 1970s chauvinism and hyperinflation. (Question for younger readers: Do you see the noughties and the 1970s as different eras or is that just something old people notice?)
The Wicker Man: a Christian policeman from “the mainland” investigates a missing girl on an island of singing pagans with hilarious results (Christ fails him as he burns to death in a giant wicker effigy). It is hoped that this will have a positive effect on the harvest. Much like The Riordans, The Wicker Man was partially made to inform people of innovative new farming methods.
The policeman in ‘Allo ‘Allo: fans of the Gallic 1980s war saga will, of course, relate most to the undercover British agent flawlessly masquerading as a suave local policeman undetected by all the Frenchies. He’s a stealth fish out of water. “Good Moaning” is his catchphrase. This is perfect French for “Good morning”. ‘Allo ‘Allo is, as regular readers of this column will know, my favourite foreign-language drama.
Connell in Normal People: Not all fish-out-of-water TV properties are crime focused. Unless the crime is stealing our hearts. At a certain point Lenny Abrahamson’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People becomes a fish-out-of-water drama about a hunky culchie who must manoeuvre among the posh hipsters of Trinity College. They do not realise he is, despite his rough exterior, a brainy man who is good at sex. As a hunky culchie who went to Trinity, I can relate. (There’s definitely more to Normal People than this but it’s been a while since I watched/read it).
[ Normal People TV review: Painful, joyful, gorgeousOpens in new window ]
Zardoz: Connell in Normal People reminds me a bit of Sean Connery in John Boorman’s Zardoz. In that film that brutish lunk, clad in nothing but a teensy red breechclout and a handlebar moustache, finds himself in a scientifically advanced and ethereal realm called the Vortex (Trinity) amid a pile of effete and decadent “Eternals” (people from Dublin). They are enthralled by his brutish ways. He is a total fish out of water. And he is confounded by his surroundings. He has never seen the like, hailing from a post-apocalyptic wasteland where he rode horses on a beach, had a gun licence and worshipped a giant stone head (Mayo).
The Littlest Hobo: “There’s something odd about this miniature crime-solving tramp, something I can’t put my finger on.” (Thirty minutes later, I start counting legs): “HE’S A DOG! A dog out of kennel! A fish out of water by another name! And another television reference that remains totally recognisable and hip to the youthful readers of The Irish Times.”
BoJack Horseman: Neither a man nor a dog but a B-list actor with the head of a horse, he is the animated protagonist of Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s excellent absurdist exploration of existential angst, Bojack Horseman. One of the best episodes of that show is an all-silent episode titled, literally, Fish out of Water, and it involves Bojack visiting an underwater city and experiencing loneliness and ennui. Yes, television had a lot of money and went a bit weird for a while there. But I’m glad this exists.
[ BoJack Horseman: the smartest, funniest, saddest comedy on TVOpens in new window ]
Emily in Paris: a tiny American with the dress sense of a child goes to live in the Eiffel Tower where she subsists on wine and baguettes while stealing Parisian boyfriends and shouting at French people in English. She is a role model for millions.
The Wizard of Oz: an American goes abroad on holiday, instantly kills someone, spends the rest of her visit evading justice with a robot and a lion before killing again and escaping back to America. I am still awaiting Netflix’s true-crime version of this story.
The Irish RM: A 1980s adaptation of Somerville and Ross’s novels about a stuffy British magistrate (professional Englishman Peter Bowles) who is constantly being confounded by the eccentric Irishmen who surround him and over whom he must enact gentle but firm judgement. In this instance the bigger fish-out-of-water story is called “colonialism”. I kind of love The Irish RM but the subtext of each episode really is: “The subjugation of Ireland? Sure wasn’t there a pair of us in it? Chortle!” This was also, in fairness, the subtext of this newspaper in the early part of the last century.
