There is no end to defective detectives.
Forever they come at us; they drown us in their endless quirks, they flow like a river deep with neuroses and broken relationships, rage and despair.
They are the television coppers, and they are so fatally troubled.
They suffer on the cross of isolation as they rid society of its sinners, their own shot at simple peace corrupted on the way.
There was Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) in True Detective; a haunted and solitary man, he thought life was a meaningless disease, and hope an illusion.
There was Wallander's Kurt Wallander, who wandered the frozen grey wastelands of Scandinavia, his life a sad shell washed up on the shore of the Baltic Sea, but his crime-fighting zeal undiminished by his bitter loneliness and pain.
Series one was dark and heart-wrenching, but good, all the same.
Series two, a couple of episodes in, has some issues.
It is fine for a detective to be defective, but not to be deeply unprofessional in court.
Broadchurch series one followed the search for the killer of an 11-year-old boy, a search that ended with the arrest of Ellie Miller's husband.
Ellie is understandably somewhat traumatised by that outcome in series two.
Alec Hardy, meanwhile, is still battling some awful illness that makes him clutch at his heart and almost die quite regularly - he should get that looked at.
Ellie's bad husband has pleaded not guilty, despite confessing, leading everyone to court, where Charlotte Rampling is the clearly troubled (not sure what her problem is) prosecuting barrister.
Things go wrong.
Police bring a stony-faced, unflappable persona with them to court, and, in my experience, do not fly off in defensive rants.
Alec and Ellie fail on that account, falling easily to the barbs and innuendoes of defence lawyer Sharon Bishop (Marianne Jean Baptiste).
We know, at least, why Bishop is troubled - her son is in prison.
Series two is troubled a bit too, having misjudged the line between dramatic and slightly silly.
And with so many deeply troubled people, it is really hard to keep up, and a little hard to care.
Speaking of being troubled, superheroes can fall into that category.
Look a Batman, he's always struggling with the morality of his role.
Superheroes: A Never Ending Battle looks at the evolution of the genre, beginning with Depression-era comic writers, and legends such as Stan Lee.
On BBC Knowledge this Saturday at 7.30pm, host Liev Schreiber (who apparently had a troubled childhood) gives us the lowdown.
- Charles Loughrey
