Retro detective series Murder She Wrote is probably regarded by those who watch it as the ideal accompaniment to a nice cup of tea and a sit down. Perhaps even the television equivalent of a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Modern life is a constant bombardment of drive-thrus and take-aways, the Gatwick Express, mobile internet and speed dating. There’s a reason why Heartbeat dragged on for so long. People occasionally like to seek refuge from the terminal velocity of the 21st century in the safe and mundane.

Murder She Wrote invites us for a brief sojourn in Cabot Cove, the haven of the small town persona, and ruled over, I mean resided in, by Jessica Fletcher. Widowed, retired, not much to do but her hair and pen the odd mystery novel. So where does Jessica Fletcher get the inspiration for her books? Why, from that same small town she is so reluctant to let fame and fortune drag her from. Yes, happily for Jessica, she lives in America’s number one crime zone. Badly executed, cardboard cut-out crime. Nothing too nasty. We don’t want to put the viewers off their shortbread. We don’t want anybody’s pacemaker cutting out, this isn’t Cracker.

What we do want is some gentle escapism, and that’s precisely what we’ll get, provided we’re prepared to entirely suspend our disbelief, and we’re not too fussed about a plot. Maybe we’ll figure out who did it. Probably not. But there is usually some fun to be had along the way, as Cabot Cove’s police force, despite having to deal with murder on an almost daily basis, aren’t very good at it.

Should her home town manage to earn temporary respite from death, Jessica has an inexplicable number of friends both in the US and abroad, whom she always seems to call upon at the right time, ie. when somebody decides to kill one of them. Unsurprisingly, the police force outside Cabot Cove are also incapable of solving a crime without Jessica’s help. Even though they rarely accept her help, and she has to rely on her writer’s guile to sniff out the pesky perpetrator. Just what does the rest of the country do without her? She never fails to spot the killer, corner them, and extract a full confession within convenient earshot of the law, who must then begrudgingly arrest them.

Brighton’s crime scene could certainly do with a dose of Fletcher. I wonder how she’d feel about teaming up with the Beach Patrol?