Aidan Smith's TV week: Who is Erin Carter? (Netflix), Tommy Jessop Goes to Hollywood (BBC1), Top Guns: Inside the RAF (C4), The Man Who Stole The Scream (Sky Documentaries)

It’s disappointing to learn that Douglas Henshall, post-Shetland, is finding work hard to come by. As a 57-year-old white man, the Scot says, “there aren’t so many roles around for me anymore”.

Top Guns: Inside the RAF - Channel 4

But one has come up. For a brief moment I’m wondering if this might be as another windswept and introspective cop on Orkney. (Similar gig, slightly less populous archipelago). Or Mull, taking over policing from PC Plum. Or Cramond Island, where duties are confined to assisting low-tide day-trippers to the pimple in the Forth who end up stranded. Or perhaps his reduced state means he’s sent all the way to Rockall (Det Insp Dougie: “Anything happening out there? Apart from the seagulls cr*****g, I mean?” Second-in-command: “No boss - r**k all.”).

But Who is Erin Carter? (Netflix) doesn’t skimp on anything. Not glamorous locations or glamorous co-stars. Not plot twists achieved by handbrake turn or faintly ridiculous backstories. Or certs for inclusion in 2023’s best ripostes: “You think you’re better than everyone else … Me? You have a giant naked ice sculpture of yourself in the middle of your terrace!”

Neither line is uttered by our man’s Daniel Lang. Indeed for a while I’m less concerned with who Erin Carter might be but rather, where is Douglas Henshall? Eventually it narrows down to him being one of two guys: the gun-toting lawyer who Carter’s neighbour, a detective, has persuaded her to bug in return for turning a blind eye to her deadly kung fu. Or … the father summoned to his son’s school to discuss the boy having drawn giant willies all over his mock-exam paper.

Evin Ahmad in Who is Erin Carter?

Henshall is the dad. “I take it this wasn’t an art test … not exactly Picasso’s blue period,” he sighs. Lang, though, isn’t all he seems but then who is? Not Carter (Evin Ahmad) who appears to start out a desperate mum at the water’s edge, thrusting money at a boatman and setting sail for a new life for her and her daughter (Suella Braverman needn’t panic, this vessel is leaving Britain).

Suddenly we’re in Barcelona where equally suddenly Carter has acquired a Spanish husband. She’s a supply teacher - willy boy is one of her pupils - who foils a supermarket raid, stabbing one of the robbers with a cake-tester. How did she get so good at neutralizing bad guys? Why is her daughter haunted by werewolves? Why can’t her husband fix the tap in the kitchen? Why is the subject of the giant naked ice sculpture insisting it’s a “gift of love” from her husband when she’s shagging the tennis coach?

There are a lot of unanswered questions in Who is Erin Carter? and, despite an obvious debt to Killing Eve and the threat that it could turn into a paella of silliness at any moment, these are the thin summer weeks for the goggle-box and you may want to stick with this biff-bang caper to see some of the issues resolved. Plus, Ahmad makes for a cool kick-ass heroine and it’s never a chore watching Henshall. A Rockall-based crime drama called - oh let’s think - Rockall? I might be up for that.

From Barca we move to Lossie. Top Guns: Inside the RAF (Channel 4) is a docusoap about our brave boys based in Lossiemouth, the 3,000 servicemen - and women - with the mission of keeping the skies safe and free.

Tommy Jessop takes his superhero movie dream all the way to Hollywood

There’s a lot of hanging about, though not as much as before Russia invaded Ukraine. Disappointingly, there are no endless games of cards like in old Battle of Britain movies, though nor are there pet dogs answering to politically-incorrect names. If the siren ever sounds, will anyone shout “Go, go, go!” or another of those other classic lines from the Tom Cruise franchise?

Harry Brooks is training to fly Typhoons. “As a kid I always wanted to be a rally driver or something stupid like that,” he says. “Anything that would make my mum worry.” He must engage in a dogfight with his commanding officer, Kev Tervett, who admits: “I’m the most competitive person I know. I’ll always be the guy who orders the hottest curry.”

Kev’s skills at wrenching 20 tons of warplane across the blue skies over Moray are too hot for Harry who does the right thing back at base and phones his mother to tell her he’s okay.

Jake Desmond has been flying Typhoons for five years. He didn’t have the fighter pilot dream growing up; that was his best mate. “I stole his dream. He’s now selling car insurance.” The smirk is pure Cruise but Jake is craving action.

Then Russia obliges. Two of their “bogeys” are lurking around NATO airspace so Jake is despatched to Estonia. The reason the conflict hasn’t escalated, Kev had been telling his fly-guys, is “there are people like you who would inflict a huge amount of damage on them … deliver ‘combat effect’.”

Is it escalating now? Will combat effect be required? This is exciting - especially after the Lossie chef building up his part somewhat - and with Jake having the enemy in his sights I’m not missing Cruise. “Time slows down, your vision narrows,” he pants. “If I get caught up in the moment and accidentally collide with one of these aircraft, it could lead to World War Three.” Spoiler alert - it doesn’t.

I wonder how Hugh Grant, Ralph Fiennes and Samuel L. Jackson are feeling right now. Tommy Jessop, the actor with Down’s syndrome, has them on his wish-list for his superhero movie. He calls up each of them in Tommy Jessop Goes to Hollywood (BBC1), a lovely, life-affirming documentary about how learning difficulties are no impediment to having dreams, only they don’t get back to him. But Kit Harrington does.

Will Sharpe from The White Lotus offers help and so does Neve Campbell. Jessop is a riot on the journey to Tinseltown. “You might recognise me from a show called Line of Duty,” he says. “I got arrested, interrogated and drowned in a lake. That was fun!” But there are also moments to make you blub, such as at the church where he was christened. Mum Jane tells him: “The doctor said you’d never read, never speak, never do anything very much.” Tommy asks: “Did you think I was a mistake?” If only that doctor could see him now, says Jane. “You’re not a mistake, you’re a miracle.”

The theft of “Norway’s Mona Lisa” is definitely movie-worthy though any film would have to go some to top Sky Documentaries’ The Man Who Stole The Scream. What an incredible tale, and what incredible characters.

There’s Pal Enger who nicked Edvard Munch’s masterpiece but also Charley Hill, the Scotland Yard detective who snatched it back. Ex-footballer Enger, haunted by the painting as a kid, wanted to be notorious for outwitting the police - laughably easy at first - and confesses to some vanity. So does former paratrooper and Vietnam vet Hill: “An undercover cop should have character and imagination and I’ve got them in spades.”

Who could play the pair? I’d cast Paul Heaton of the Beautiful South as Enger - a good likeness. Hill is more difficult to pin down, like the best gentleman adventurers who’re masters of disguise. Until rewinding to check, I’m convinced he’s sporting a cravat.