TV Review: Daggy Aussie cop show suffers total eclipse of the art

Aaron Jeffrey plays Detective Jack Cross. Photo / Supplied

Prime's The Sunshine Strip (last night) may not be the worst ever telly cop show ever made - that would be The Bill, which at least had soporific qualities - but it must come close.

It is so bad, it might even be good, although not so badly good that it's been renewed for a second series.

Set on the Gold Coast, made to look like Miami but daggier, the Strip features a female cop who goes to work in a fetching little sleeveless waistcoat and heels. This is what passes for acceptable work gear on the Coast where, apparently, every other sheila gets about in a bikini.

Rookie detective is spotted "interviewing" a pair of bikini babes. "You going to work or pick up?" asks his boss, another Aussie sheila.

"Work, obviously," said rookie detective, "but I'm prepared to multi-task if the right woman's watching."

The storyline was as good as the dialogue. A window cleaner spots a pretty girl in her apartment on the 30th floor, they have a little flirtation, he holds up his business card (even window cleaners have business cards which, presumably, include their cellphone numbers) and asks her to marry him. Then he plunges to his death.

The pretty girl is "interviewed" by our intrepid detectives who somehow fail to elicit the business card information, which might have led them to wonder where the bloke's cellphone might be. Stuck up a palm tree, it transpires. On this phone is a video of a famous old surfer being tortured.

Famous old surfer has a trophy wife. The window cleaner also did their windows. The surfer is a suspect, until he's found with a gun hole in his head.

Turns out wifey had got herself into debt with a loan shark and was having to bonk him at the ludicrously named Pink Poodle motel to pay off the debt.

This managed to be both ridiculous and clichéd.

Just so we knew we were at the beach, the crusty old boss detective keeps a surfboard in his office.

"Got a motive?" he snarled.

Bloke detective did (I couldn't be bothered remembering their names; I'd rather sit through every episode ever made of The Bill than watch this stuff again.) "Older saggy husband ... much younger, tauter wife who's got an even younger, very taut window cleaner."

"What's with all the eyebrow acting?" said bloke detective to sheila detective. "Guess who's got a younger, tauter wife?" That would be crusty old boss detective.

The murder weapon was a brand name chef's knife. Bloke detective knew immediately what it was. Sheila detective said, sneeringly, "Do your spoons and forks have names too?"

He's been bumped by his wife. She thinks all men are idiots. No doubt they'll end up in the sack, possibly at the Pink Poodle.

They're both top detectives. The window cleaning bloke fell to his death at 9.20am. Top bloke detective to window cleaner's brother: "Your brother, he died at 10.30."

Old surfie's trophy wife is wired up to entrap horrible loan shark. She stabs him. "I wanted to see whether he had a heart," she wailed.

It's that sort of telly. The kind in which the eyebrow acting you'll do from the couch is the best acting you'll see on the night.