Dalziel & Pascoe: Season 7

Amazon.com Poor Peter Pascoe (played with glum determination by Colin Buchanan).

Not only is his dogged, slow-but-steady police work consistently outshined by the piercing insights of his partner, Andy Dalziel (the eternally surly Warren Clarke), but his personal life keeps getting caught up in woeful crimes: When he attends a wedding as best man in "The Unwanted" or plays squash with an old friend in "Dialogues of the Dead," murder crops up posthaste.

And when he tries to date… well, it doesn't work out well in "Mens Sana." Not that Dalziel is much luckier; his only sister turns out to have a surprising connection with an investigation in "Sins of the Fathers."