Oh my goodness, I've been in love with Peter Davison for 25 years -- through All Creatures Great and Small and Doctor Who -- and oh dear, I've just fallen in love with him all over again in The Last Detective. This 2003-2007 ITV series never aired in the U.S., but now at least we can watch it on DVD, just out from Acorn Media.

We get nine discs and seventeen 75-minute episodes of Davison's "Dangerous" Davies, a North London police detective who's the butt of everyone's joke: the nickname is ironic, because he's just about the least dangerous man alive. His cop colleagues rib him mercilessly because he's nice to old ladies and conscientiously follows up on, you know, clues and stuff. What a dweeb, actually doing his job...

But Davies isn't a John McClane-style rogue cop. He's exactly the opposite: kind, gentle, polite, and unassuming. Davies may well be the nicest cop in the world, and a completely un-television one. In the bonus interview, Davison says he's "... the kind of policeman you meet whenever there is a problem in your life. I've never really met a policeman the kind of which are portrayed on television, who are either supersleuths or hard-nosed in-your-face detectives." It makes the show feel kinda old-fashioned, but in a good way, as a low-key celebration of doggedness and hard work and stick-to-it-ive-ness that, paradoxically, also becomes a very modern critique of just-good-enough attitudes that anyone who has worked in almost any kind of contemporary workplace will recognize.

Not that there aren't robberies and murders and other felonious shenanigans aplenty to keep Davies busy. He's "the last detective" because his "guv," DI Aspinall (Rob Spendlove), says he's the last of his team he'll ever choose to get the juicy cases, though Davies manages to stumble into them anyhow, sometimes accidentally. It's not that he wants the high-profile crimes on his platter, he just wouldn't mind a little more respect from his coworkers, is all. But no matter how often he actually succeeds in solving a case -- which is pretty often, and not by accident -- that respect is never forthcoming. So he uses his oddball pal, Mod (Sean Hughes), as his sounding board and sometimes-Watson.

The laid-back attitude of the show is a startling contrast to most cop series, and a marked divergence from other recent British series such as The Commander and Blue Murder and Prime Suspect, all of which are about high-powered female cops. It's as if with the women storming the upper ranks, the pressure is off the guys to be ambitious -- Davies likes being a lowly detective constable, because it means he can still do some good for regular people.

Still, even the nicest cop in the world sometimes ignores the finer points of police work once in a while, like the need for those pesky warrants. And even the nicest cop in the world has an impossible relationship with his almost ex-wife, Julie (Emma Amos) -- the job is still The Job, and it still interferes with a personal life. There's plenty that's recognizably "cop show" here for fans of the genre. But it's a pleasant surprise that there's something fresh to be mined from the genre, too.

GUEST STAR ALERT! Watch in the fourth series for a guest appearance by Battlestar Galactica's Jamie Bamber, in the episode "Dangerous' Liaisons." I won't tell you if he's the killer or not.

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MaryAnn Johanson, not a frakkin' Cylon (email me)

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