Is Wire in the Blood too violent?

The long-running ITV show stars Green as shrink Dr Tony Hill. In the special he was working on the case of a war vet charged with killing his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, in Texas.

Within seconds the programme makers - the Newcastle based Coastal Productions headed by Green himself - felt it necessary to show graphic details of the woman's murder.

Cue lots of blood - LOTS of it. Then the killer, knife in hand, was seen hovering over one of the children. It was a truly chilling scene, thankfully not showing the actual murder, but it was arguably not necessary even in that form.

Later, however, we were "treated" to a series of images in Hill's mind which were definitely over the top,

Worst was an image of a child in her coffin. Another showed both children at their own graves and as the drama progressed there were scenes showing a bloodied doll held by the girl as she was murdered.

Wire was, admittedly, shown after the watershed but it was still an unpleasant experience.

Looking back, it has always had a few "close your eyes" scenes as Hill tries to get in to the minds of psychopaths and killers with the violence often perpetrated against women. There are no "ordinary" murders here - they are always characterised by extreme violence, often sadistic, and the deaths are almost always drawn-out.

That's surprising in a series based on characters created by a woman writer, Val McDermid.
And Green's partner in Coastal Productions is Sandra Jobling, credited with being executive producer. Both could be expected bring an empathy to the Hill character that's just not there.

It doesn't help that Hill is written as a nut-job himself. He's had a brain tumour, suffers blackouts, and occassionally crosses the line in his attempt to understand the criminals he meets.

He's a loner, he's eccentric, he's obsesssed. he's manic. In other words - he could easily become one of the villians he's supposed to help catch.

A new series of Wire is already in the can. I'll be watching it - because Green is a good actor - but there will always be that nagging doubt that instead of warning about gratutous violence, it glorifies in it.