And lo, it came to pass. On Easter Sunday I sat down with my parents, who had Heartbeat on. Then it was ITV1′s much-trailered crime drama He Kills Coppers. And then, if I wanted it, Mad Men on BBC Four. It was a Sixties night on telly on Easter Sunday, and by the end of it I was all retroed out, I have to say. Heartbeat is Heartbeat, so I read the paper, but I was really looking forward to He Kills Coppers, sequel to The Long Firm (which was super-duper and was on the BBC a few years back) and the latest adaptation of a Jake Arnott novel. It was good, very good.

Set among the celebrations of England’s 1966 World Cup win (although that really didn’t have too much to do with the story), He Kills Coppers started with Frank Taylor, a young copper, arriving at a murder scene. It was all blurred, there was a lot of commotion. There were trails of blood on the road, a body under a police car, a journalist being told to eff off as he was taking pictures and, finally, the image of a dead man’s glazed face.

Flashback to three weeks earlier, and Frank Taylor (Rafe Spall) was giving us the lowdown. He was a cocky, confident copper who had risen up the ranks in no time. He was part of the infamous Nipper Read’s team, designated to keep the streets clean during the World Cup. His partner and best mate, John Young, were on the streets, looking for hookers and some of the clip joints that were scamming money off everyone. During a routine walk-about in Soho, they came across Jeannie (Kelly Reilly) who, with blonde bob and Mary Quant style, took their breath away. They went with her to a club, whose owner tried to bribe them. This was a clip joint alright.

By now, Frank was besotted with Jeannie, but she only had eyes for John. The two Js started a relationship, which signalled the start of the end for John and Frank’s brotherly friendship. Frank became obsessed, stalking the two out until he barged in on Jeannie and threatened her with more questioning and a cell for the night. She gave him one for free.

Frank, in a bid to break them up, then asked Nipper to transfer John off the team, but was soon promoted to the flying squad. This fulfillment of a lifetime ambition quickly turned sour – turned out that the flying squad were a firm within a firm, on the take and cahoots with London’s crime fraternity.

By now John and Frank had drifted apart, but Frank, drunk after the World Cup final and upset about the flying squad’s ethics, took his old mate for a drink and revealed all about Jeannie. John biffed him in chops. Their friendship was over.

Meanwhile in another part of town, Billy Porter (Mel Raido) was holding up a bank. He was a sharp-suited mofo, smooth but hard. Everything you would imagine a criminal from the 1960s could and should be. Even though the heist didn’t go as smoothly as he would have liked (the teller had a heart attack), he was basking in the afterglow in a caff. He spotted an attractive blonde and moved in. They soon became lovers, and Billy’s mum (Maureen Lipman) explained, during Sandra’s first visit for dinner, that Billy was a good boy really… even though he had been inside before.

Billy was enjoying happiness for the first time in a while, but one morning he woke up with a start. He was getting the urge again, so he packed a couple of shooters into his bag, rounded up his gang and went looking for somewhere to rob. On the way to somewhere, anywhere, John and another policeman stopped them, wanted to know what they were up to. Billy, extremely wound up, shot both of them.

Their was a third character in all this, perhaps the most interesting of them all. Tony Meehan (Steven Robertson) was a journalist. A struggling hack on a newspaper with a dragon for an editor, Tony was desperate for a big story. His editor asked him to go and find him some homosexuals, so they could name and shame in the paper. Tony’s foray into London’s gay underworld was intriguing – although it sickened him, he seemed to be drawn to it. It came to a head when he went into a public toilet, met a man and, when he was propositioned, went mental and beat him up. The scene was similar to the one in The Curse Of Steptoe last week, when Wilfred Bramble went into a public toilet. Even though Bramble was gay, he was also disgusted by his sexuality (homosexuality was still illegal in the Sixties). I wonder if Tony, in the next episodes, will explore his sexuality further.

But, with John laying dead on the road, his mate Frank in tatters, Tony might just have stumbled across the big story he was looking for.

Blimey. Where to start with this? It was all going on. Everyone looked fantastic – the guys and the girls – the atmosphere was spot-on (seedy Sixties London was brought to life beautifully), and I liked the story between cocksure Frank (Rafe Spall was very good) and his partner. I also thought Kelly Reilly’s character was a welcome addition to the blokey cast. I just hope her character is allowed to develop. You get the impression this was a taster, a scene-setter, to what is to come, and the three men’s paths will cross eventually. I’ll be watching to see whether they do.