I’ve been living in London for 13 years now and, under the patina of glamour and tourist attractions, the London I know is dirty, stinky, grimy, hustly, bustly, massively multicultural and has about a million things going on at once. Constant background noise, background light. When there is silence, it’s deafening. Up until now, dramas based in London haven’t really captured this smorgasbord of characteristics, preferring to focus in on things they think London has in abundance. Not Moses Jones though. It felt a bit dirty, a bit hopeless and a bit all over the place. I liked it. Spot-on London that is. And it had the new Doctor, Matt Smith, in it is as well. What wasn’t there to like?

The first scenes of Moses Jones featured an old man, disorientated and babbling. He clutched a photograph and was asking people in markets, people in shops, people on the streets where Joy was. Who Joy was we didn’t know, but this was the first glimpse of proper London and it leapt out of the screen – bustling markets with Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Causations all going about their daily stuff.

For the first ten minutes, as this guy, Gerald it turned out his name was, was shambling from one place to the next in some distress. Gerald was taken off the streets by two goons, and soon Gerald was found chopped up in a suitcase.

We then met a variety of characters, including an African toilet cleaner guy who copped a load of racist flack from his boss, a guy with enormously broad shoulders who sang in an African music band, a heart-stoppingly gorgeous woman called Joy and a young cab firm worker. It turns out that in a city of many nations, they were linked by the their own, Uganda.

And we also met Moses Jones. He was seconded from the case he was working on at Scotland Yard because of his Ugandan roots (“You know, you’re lot,” he was told by his superior) and was teamed with a young copper called Dan Twentyman (Smith). Now, Matt Smith has this thing going on with his forehead. He’s a young man with the crinkly forehead of Gordon Ramsay and he does that thing that George Clooney does – look down with his face and up with his eyes - a lot. I like him, but his main job in this was to be naive. Moses Jones, on the other hand… well, you didn’t really get to know him too much although you go the impression he’d seen all the darkness London had to offer. During the few moments he got to himself, he shut himself in a darkened room and downed vodka.

Moses didn’t really get too much time to himself, nor did we, as viewers, get too much time to get to know him. Unusually for a cop drama, its felt that main protagonist wasn’t the main focus here. It was all about the Ugandan community as a whole and the characters who have come over to Britain and tried to make a living for themselves. It seemed all of them had secrets carried over from their home country (Solomon, the broad-shouldered singer in the African band said, tellingly, “It’s happening all over again, but in a different country.” Everyone hinted that the man murdered, Joy’s uncle, was part of a wider conspiracy involving a shady guy called Matthias, a toilet cleaner who was just trying to keep a low profile.

All leads led Moses and Twentyman to a knocking shop called Regina’s, where Joy worked and Matthias sought refuge (I loved the madam, kind of African Barbara Windsor. “It’s ok dear, this isn’t the Foreign Legion, you can talk to them like normal people,” she told Twentyman as he cackhandedly tried to interview the girls).

Episode one of Moses Jones was a definite scene-setter, but I loved it. I’m looking for it to settle down a little bit, and I’m looking forward to getting to know Moses a bit more (Shaun Parkes was just the job in the lead role, putting Harley Street firmly behind him, and Winmu Mosaku as Joy smouldered nicely). It may have been a little bit unfocused, but this first hour had more vibrancy and things going on than most cop shows can fit into an entire series.