PICTURE this. You are on holiday, chilling on the balcony, the family is downstairs at the pool. Suddenly, "Crack!" The sound of gunfire followed by screaming as panic sets in and people flee. What would you do?

We might like to think we would morph into Bruce Willis or Liam “Taken” Neeson with his very particular set of skills (mine includes extracting ticks from dogs, and light painting and decorating). What we should be asking is “What would Keeley Hawes, of Bodyguard, The Durrells, and Line of Duty, do?”

No idea, but I know what her character, Jo, does in the thriller Crossfire (BBC1, Tuesday-Thursday). First, she chooses the right shoes to wear, trainers rather than flip-flops, because instinct tells her that whatever happens next, there will be running involved.

Sure enough there is. There’s also tearing around with a shotgun helping the hotel manager to ferry guests to safety. You might think this would be outside the comfort zone of most holidaymakers, but Jo used to be a copper. Not for very long, and she seems to have left under a cloud, but there is just enough of a connection for plausibility’s sake. The set up established, writer Louise Doughty (Apple Tree Yard) is off and running.

Jo is on holiday with a group of pals and their children, so plenty of people to place in jeopardy and ample scope for secrets and lies to tumble out. Doughty makes the most of the three hours, spread over three nights, packing in the fast-paced action. But just when the going gets good, everything stops for yet another tension-killing flashback.

The story was weak. While you could believe such a thing might happen at a holiday resort, because it has, I didn't buy the motive of the gunmen here. Their characters were no more than rough sketches.

Crossfire had its compensations, starting with Hawes, and Lee Ingleby, so impressive in The A Word and outstanding here as Jo’s whiny husband. You have to hand it to Doughty. When it comes to dispensing justice for past or current sins, she is brutal. Wouldn’t want to borrow a fiver from her and not repay it. Ditto Keeley Hawes, who has opened up a whole new career path for herself as a kick-ass mum. There might be a movie in it if they set it in Glasgow. Fry Hard anyone?

There is no doubt how James Nesbitt, star of Bloodlands (BBC1, Sunday), would react to a hotel invasion. He would screw up his eyes, let the intruders know he was television’s number one maverick detective, and grump at the wrong ‘uns till they surrendered.

Nesbitt plays DCI Tom Brannick in the Northern Ireland-set crime drama, now back for a second series. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what had happened in the first run, other than Brannick had a murky past. He still has it in the new series, but this time all concerned are ready to stretch the boundaries of the characters and story, be a little cheekier, which works well.

Brannick and his sarky sidekick Niamh (Charlene McKenna) are on the case of a suspiciously cool widow whose accountant husband has been found murdered. Was the husband dodgy, and is DCI Brannick, with that murky past of his, connected in any way to this dodginess?

Nesbitt looks like he’s having fun, and when you add the great Lorcan Cranitch (Cracker), the Brando of shouty police chiefs, into the mix, Bloodlands starts to look like a decent prospect for Sunday nights.

Ghosts (BBC1, Friday) despite having a few miles on the clock, can still be relied upon for a laugh or three. The sitcom about a couple who buy a haunted house, but only the woman can see the ghosts who live there, works because the characters revel in being stereotypes. Hard to choose a favourite but I do have a fondness for Julian (Simon Farnaby), the disgraced MP character doomed to wander the afterlife trouserless. Summer or winter, he always looks frozen.

Also returning, this one for a fifth series, was Cunk on Earth (BBC2, Tuesday) with Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk, the world’s most clueless documentary presenter.

Cunk began life as a character on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe. The drill was that she would ask an unsuspecting academic daft questions, which they would do their best to answer. Much of the comedy stemmed from the experts not knowing it was a mockumentary.

Since there cannot be a professor left in the UK who hasn’t heard of Cunk, the central prank has been replaced with the academics playing along, which is not as funny. Happily, Cunk never disappoints, as when she tells us that cavemen were “the first to use tools, which is something that men have forgotten how to do today. Which is why they have to get someone in. A real man”. Out of the mouths of TV babes …