Another overhyped mess of a drama came to a close last night and what a load of old toffee it was. If this gets turned into a series, I can think of at least one household that'll be giving it a wide berth. Mine.

Did no-one ever listen to the premise - a small group of pro-lifers killing children in an effort to stop... er... the killing of unborn children - and think "hang on. Didn't we have a slogan in the seventies that went something like 'fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity' "?

Apparently not.

And if we're going to title the thing Hunter based on the fact of the main character's love of all things astronomical (in general) and the constellation Orion - the Hunter (in particular) then don't you think it would have been a good idea to mention that love of astronomy more often than once in the first minute of the two-parter and once in the last minute? How unreal did that sound?

Mind you, I was put off the whole thing in the first few seconds pretty much before the drama had even started. In the same way that Mof can be turned off Life of Riley by the canned laughter, I can be turned off by the "clever" use of Flash animated credits. Does *anyone* still think it's cool to have the letters of the credits assemble themselves and then disperse again? Come on, get over it. It's not big, and it's not clever.

That's a small thing, really. A minor annoyance. It didn't put me off. Indeed, I had high hopes of this, from what I'd seen in the trailers. A solid, traditional police drama with a swift story arc (two hours, over two nights) in the tradition of Silent Witness or Waking the Dead, with a strong cast and what looked like some choice locations. And after the dire suicide-inducing drivel that was Wallander, I figured we were overdue for some decent Sunday-night drama.

Well guess what? We're still overdue for some. Because when I have to sit through lines like "don't spout shit unless you know what you're talking about," listen to characters discussing the difference between "chronic" spina bifida and a bloke who's "just got this limp," and watch a completely fabricated argument about one character's attractiveness to the opposite sex blow up and then blow away all in the space of 20 seconds, I know I haven't found it.

What I've found is something from someone who doesn't do his research. Or listen to his own dialogue. Like so many dramas of recent years, this one had great production values, reasonable performances from talented actors, top-drawer camerawork and direction, but which at heart had a ridiculous premise wrapped up in second-rate words. Awful.