KEY POINTS:
If anyone can sound a mighty blast from the past it's screen-filling actor Robbie Coltrane. The dramatic heavyweight made a welcome return last night in Cracker (TV One, 8.30pm), reprising his role as the boozing, betting forensic psychologist Fitz as if he'd never been away.
The head-reading sleuth had supposedly been living for the past decade in Australia - "land of skin cancer and Skippy", he sneered as he gazed out the car window at the alluring grey and crime-soaked streets of Manchester - and returned home with the long-suffering Mrs Cracker for their daughter's wedding.
Put the irrepressibly obnoxious Fitz in a dicky suit and elegant setting with the booze on tap and pretty soon you have a one-man insurgency
Every time the father of the bride opened his mouth, another bomb went off, from wondering in his official speech what his daughter was doing marrying an accountant to loudly regaling guests with his views on 9/11.
And one call from his old mates on the force for his help to solve the seemingly unprovoked murder of an American stand-up comedian, and he ditched the family holiday without a shred of compunction: "You can stick your Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, this is real life," he salivated as the police car picked him up and relieved him of the onerous task of entertaining the grandchild he hadn't seen for years.
No, the years have not mellowed him.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the script.
In this rather odd, one-off return visit, the once blistering crime drama of the 90s proved a mere shadow of its former self.
The question as to why writer Jimmy McGovern would choose to have another go at what many hold to be one of the best telly crime dramas ever made was answered from the opening credits of news footage of British soldiers in Basra and warmongering cronies Bush and Blair. The writer had "something to say" about the war on terror.
The action was set against a non-stop background of news reports on Iraq and all the characters seemed set on delivering little lectures on the obscenities of the war, from Fitz winding the wedding guests up about the 9/11 attacks' "lack of dramatic structure" to Mrs Cracker's pontificating on the "sexiness" of those dominatrix-style photos from Abu Ghraib.
The protagonist, Kenny, was a former soldier whose traumatic experience of losing his mates in an ambush in Northern Ireland had been rendered insignificant by the latest, bigger war, leaving him with a homicidal grudge against the Americans and as McGovern's mouthpiece on the ironies of the shifting definitions of terrorism.
In a typical McGovern touch, we met the killer straight away, as the taxi ferrying him to a memorial visit to the neglected cemetery for soldiers killed in Northern Ireland crossed paths with the wedding cavalcade.
The twist was that the former soldier had turned policeman and was working on - or rather against - his own case.
But for all the leaden speechifying and plot cliches, the drama had its finer moments.
This was thanks not only to Coltrane's big, beefy performance but also to actor Anthony Flanagan, who made his character Kenny's lurch from a man in suicidal meltdown to terrifying murderer on a mission truly nailbiting.
The showdown, as Fitz backed him into a corner, was close to Cracker at its best.
The message overwhelmed the action at times but in this sleuthing age of the plastic CSI and its spinoffs, it was heartening to see flawed, pickled ol' Fitz more than capable of withstanding this odd blast from the past.
