TELEVISION / The ready-mix detective: James Rampton reviews the best of the weekend's programmes

The following extract is taken from the Questionnaire for Would-Be Television Detectives:

Please tick if:

1) You get results by refusing to play it by the book.

2) You row with your boss, but he always ends up indulgently allowing you 'one more day' on the case.

3) You take your work home with you and are so caught up in it you forget to buy milk.

4) You become too closely involved with suspects.

5) You live with only a cat and a fridgeful of beer for company.

6) You are trying - in vain - to give up smoking.

7) You drive a lovably unreliable classic car.

Maximum points will result in a two-hour primetime pilot.

Anna Lee (Sunday ITV), the latest applicant, passed with flying colours. Her debut outing was only saved from being one more join-the-dots detective drama by a typically sparky adaptation from Andrew Davies, a writer who gives the impression that he could make an interesting television version of the periodic table.

His dramatisation of Liza Cody's novel involved slightly too much of Lee (Imogen Stubbs) talking us through the plot. And some elements stretched credibility; surely no female would trust a slimy male motel employee who as soon as she arrived, and before you could say 'Norman Bates', had urged her to take a shower.

But, with Davies' scripts, it is often a case of 'never mind the plot, feel the background detail.' If you had blinked you would have missed the cricket-mad solicitor in an MCC tie who shared a name, Emburey, with the England off-spinner, or the creepy hotel receptionist who appeared to get his kicks by memorialising his privates in a Photo-Me booth.

Lee's chances of being commissioned for a full series were considerably enhanced when she did what we've all dreamt of doing, but, being British, have probably never dared to; she told one of those cowboy traffic-light windscreen-cleaners where to stick his squeegee.

Financial services salesmen, the focus of High Interest (Sunday C4), invariably inspire the same reaction. Box Productions made their name with fearless investigations into the RUC and Mark Thatcher. After that, mortgage and pensions advisors may have seemed like a soft target, but Sean McPhilemy's team went after them with their customary gusto.

The horse-racing analogy which ran through the programme began to flag long before it approached the winning-post, but otherwise High Interest lived up to its name. A builder who lost his home after taking on an endowment mortgage wiped his eyes as he claimed 'we weren't told nothing.' And you had to warm to any programme which forced mortgage advisors to wriggle like worms on a hook when challenged about their assurances that 'you can't go wrong' with their schemes.

Tracey Ullman appears to have more characters at her command than a Chinese calligrapher. In 'The Powder Room', one of four playlets in Tracey Ullman: A Class Act (Saturday ITV), she played four distinctive people in as many minutes. It looked like one of those showreel videos aspiring actors send round to casting directors.

As her foil, Michael Palin had a fine time reprising a character from Monty Python's 'Upper Class Twit of the Year' sketch but more often he paled beside Ullman's virtuosity. One moment she was a punk complaining that when she re-married she had to change her tattoo from 'This is Steve's bitch' to 'This is David's bitch', the next she was a cabbie shouting 'cheer up, it might never happen' as only a cabbie can.

Meridian, keen to impress as the new kid on the ITV block, had lavished a lot of attention on the settings. In the background on a Class Air flight, you could hear the steward offering the same menu to both the upper and lower classes - sausage and beans - while the middle classes were treated to chicken tikka salad with virtually fat-free mayonaise.

For all the cleverness, though, the turnover of characters left you marvelling more at the make-up artists than the scriptwriters. Watching the programme was like going to a high-powered drinks party where the host steers you from guest to guest for a token two-minute hob-nob with each.

Gallowglass (Sunday BBC1), adapted from Barbara Vine's novel, also provided a good showcase for character acting. Paul Rhys brought the right level of manic intensity to the part of Sandor, who saved the life of the unfortunate Joe (Michael Sheen) and then claimed it as his own. You realised Sandor was one sandwich short of a picnic from the moment he greeted the Norwich Express with a football goal- scorer's clenched fists and the scream, 'It's a great train.' Later, he snapped out of a sulk to break into an Irish jig before subjecting Joe to the most sadistic shave since Gene Hackman pinned a suspect to the barber's chair in Mississippi Burning.

Flashing forward as well as back, Jackie Holborough's first episode provided enough teases to keep you watching for the next two weeks. It was also proof that you don't have to have a maverick detective to make good television drama.