LIKE you, I have spent just a couple of hours in the company of Karen Pirie (STV, Sunday), telly’s newest women detective, but already I’m liking the cut of her jib.

Maybe it’s the well-scrubbed, take me as I am, no make-up face, the clothes that look like they came from the back to school range at Asda, or the steadfast refusal to play nice. Whatever, it is grand to see another woman detective following in the comfily clad footsteps of Catherine Cawood of Happy Valley (Sarah Lancashire), DS Ellie Miller of Broadchurch (Olivia Colman), and of course Vera of, er, Vera (Brenda Blethyn).

Pirie is the creation of Val McDermid, which accounts in part for the character’s credibility. The rest is up to Lauren Lyle, the actor who plays KP, and so far she’s doing just dandy.

The tale begins in 1996 in a pub in St Andrews where Gareth Southgate is about to miss a certain penalty, much to the delight of the assembled drinkers (what are we like?).

The same night a young woman, Rosie, is found murdered in the cathedral’s graveyard. Three students are questioned by police and released. A quarter of a century on the killing remains unsolved. Now a podcaster has taken up the case, so police reluctantly launch a review.

“This is what passes for journalism these days is it?” sneers a senior officer after listening to the podcast. “A sultry voice and a bit of a jingle?”

The review is handed to Pirie – good optics, her superiors agree, what with the podcaster also being a young woman.

While not expected to make any progress, Pirie uncovers new leads. Among those who are none too pleased with her promotion is a colleague and pal who hoped for the job himself.

Pirie is smart, funny, an uncompromising, no-shoeshine Sherlock type. A maverick cop, yes, another one, snore, but worth a try.

The makers of Make Me Prime Minister (Channel 4, Tuesday) have come up with a plan to take some random numptie and make them leader of the UK Government. No, this did not happen for real: Liz Truss really is PM, or was at the time of writing.

Among the 12 contestants competing for a £25,000 prize is a Scottish woman, yet to be formally introduced to us, but heard proclaiming in the first episode, “What a time to be alive.”

Split into teams and given the task of coming up with a new education policy and selling it to the press, the hopefuls in this Apprentice-style contest are, for the most part, predictably hopeless. One or two, however, you could imagine making it in politics. Then again, no country in its right mind would ever choose a PM just because he had been on a telly show, right? Have I got news for you ...

You can always rely on River City (BBC Scotland, BBC1, Monday/Tuesday) to be bonkers, and so it was for the 20th anniversary episode. Two decades, eh? All that murder and mayhem, and that was just the day the cafe ran out of Mortons rolls.

In a storyline that was It’s a Wonderful Life meets Back to the Future by way of Spider-Man, Bob (Stephen Purdon) was not looking forward to “another crappy birthday eating crappy sandwiches in my ma’s crappy hoose”.

In a case of careful what you wish for, the mechanic took a swig from a bottle of strangely coloured liquid (don’t worry, it was blue), and ended up in the "multiverse". This, explained pal Angus, was a parallel world where the same people live different variations of their lives. So Angus was now Bob, complete with shell-suit, Bob was Lenny the gangster, Lenny was a grease monkey, and so on. Only in River City.

Matters took a turn for the magnificently daft as all the old faces came back to make Bob realise Shieldinch maybe wasn’t so bad after all.

I was so busy snickering I barely noticed the lump of grit that had flown into my eye. It was just around the time Stella (“Hey Stella! STELLA!”) arrived to tell Bob that somewhere out there his best pal Deek (“Deek!) had been given a chance in life instead of dying too soon. It was a lovely, truly touching moment, a reminder that for all River City’s periodic silliness it has been home to some damn fine writing and acting in its time.

Message to Kaye Adams: good luck tonight on Strictly. Last week, the first live show, the BBC broadcaster and Loose Women host was given the tango, which is like whipping the training wheels off a toddler’s bike and signing the kid up for the Tour de France. She made it across the finish line, just.

William Hill are offering 100-1 on her being the winner, the same odds given to footballer Tony Adams (no relation), a man who moves around the floor with all the grace of a fridge freezer. Come on Kaye, a nation expects.