TV review: Highland Cops (BBC2), Beef (Netflix), Rain Dogs (BBC1), Dreamland (Sky Atlantic)

It takes precisely three seconds for BBC Scotland’s new crime-busting docu-soap shadowing bobbies on the beat to knock the opposition straight into a cop’s hat.

Meet Sam McFadyen, Gordon Gray and Nathan Rhind, some of the Highland Cops

Nee-naw, nee-naw, but we’re not in some unremarkable town centre, familiar shop names, standard street furniture and the usual kind of disturbance outside a nightclub, which may not be like the one in The Office - “hooch for a pound, Wonderbras get in free” – but most probably is.

No, just look at this backdrop – mountains that touch the sky, lochs that go on for ever, harsh, stunning, scary wilderness, with only the odd eagle to answer the siren's lonely wail as the polis wagon edges round yet another hairpin bend.

Yes, yes, very nice, but where’s the actual crime for the Highland Cops (BBC2)? Hang on, here’s a fatal shooting, a suspect with a fuzzed-out face, an urgent call to the DNA lab and a grisly autopsy that would have even the most hardened Silent Witness fan feeling in need of a wee lie down.

Daisy May Cooper in Rain Dogs

But the victim, up Loch Ness way, is a deer. Are you disappointed? Then best not let on to PC Dan Sutherland, a Geordie who didn’t want to end up policing Newcastle’s Bigg Market on Saturday nights and fancied the challenge of something bigger - Britain’s biggest beat, indeed, all 12,000 square miles of it.

And poaching is certainly testing. “There aren’t many eye witnesses,” muses Dan, “and animals can’t talk.” Really? Another Highland cop, Balamory’s PC Plum, would beg to differ. Perhaps some retraining is required here.

Meanwhile in Thurso a parcel containing drugs turns up at the post office. This definitely didn’t happen in Katie Morag and PC Andy Mackay is doing a good job of hiding his excitement. Move over, Police Interceptors!

Maybe Andy will finally get to brandish his battering ram. Heading to the address on the package, he dons his crash helmet. It seems to be the same one as Rikki Fulton wore to play Supercop. “I’m kitted up like this, just in case,” he says. Spoiler alert: the battering ram stays unused. Lovely scenery, though.

Lily Allen in Dreamland

Fancy a change of pace? Then try Beef (Netflix). Bizarrely, the title brings to mind the 1984 US presidential election, but thankfully this is not a retelling of the contest between the uncharismatic Democratic rivals (Walter Mondale, ad nauseum: “Where’s the beef?” Gary Hart, unable to think of a better retort: “Here’s the beef!”). Instead it’s a wild black comedy that begins in the car park of a big-box store in the LA ’burbs.

There’s an altercation between building contractor Danny and Amy, who seems to do something Paltrowesque with plants and, still simmering about having misplaced his receipt at the returns desk, he gives chase at such a lick that some of his goods tumble from his pick-up onto the freeway.

He’s Korean, she’s Chinese/Vietnamese. He’s down on his luck, she’s on the brink of a multi-million dollar deal. He lives in a messy apartment with a slobby gamer brother, she shares a minimalist mansion with her artist husband and young daughter. He eats burgers until he’s sick, she attends a yuppie dinner club where the menu can be 57 varieties of mushroom. And yet despite Amy’s poise and cool she’s just as easily sucked into an epic-ly petty feud.

What’s her beef? Maybe it’s the fact her life is just too perfect. Or the fact her hubby’s sculptures are really pretty rubbish. Or that he’s locked away their gun and she likes to use it as a sex toy.

Anyway, when Danny (Steven Yeun) finds out where Amy (Ali Wong) lives, pretends to be a handyman and then scarpers, having peed all over the bathroom floor, the eyes burn with rage behind her zazzy hexagonal specs and she doesn’t have the time or the inclination for any more wellness because she’s got to get even.

Netflix shows a lot of rom-coms; formulaic fluff about two people who start out hating each other, but over time, roughly 95 minutes with a 12 certificate, end up … well, you know what happens. For all of 0.8 seconds I’m wondering if this pair might go the same way, but Beef is way too smart, satirical and subversive for that.

Remarkably, a story that begins with a minor fender bender is strung out over ten episodes, each called something like “The Birds Don’t Sing, They Screech in Pain”. The first of Rain Dogs (BBC1) is titled “It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City” and award yourself an extra Creme Egg if you know this to be the name of a track from Bruce Springsteen’s debut album.

Here, Daisy May Cooper is not striving for godliness; as Soho peep show operative Costello, she just wants a break. The comedy, as dark as Beef, starts out with her running. From the bailiffs and then the taxi driver she diddles out of a fare. Worldly goods in a binbag, daughter scurrying behind, her phone flashes up “99 days sober”. Can she make it to 100?

Rain Dogs is based on Cooper’s memoir recounting life as a single mum fighting her way out of poverty and, honestly, there are plenty of laughs, just like in her last outing, Am I Being Unreasonable? She’s great at playing blonde bombsites. “Like one of those wrestlers from the 90s,” says the ungallant pervert who offers her his spare room.

Dreamland (Sky Atlantic) is a comedy vehicle for Lily Allen and optimistically I’m hoping it might be as daring and filthy as the same channel’s I Hate Suzie starring Billie Piper. Alas, nothing like. Much of the action is set on the beach at Margate and it’s as light as candyfloss.