News footage this Sunday about the mainland wife who allegedly chopped her husband to death after discovering him in Hong Kong living with another woman reminded me of The Sculptress (Pearl, 9.30pm).
The police attempted to shield the woman from cameras as she was escorted from her apartment, but one could clearly see her clothes heavily stained in blood; the chopper assumed to be the lethal weapon was filmed lying in a corner.
The carnage inside must have been similar to the scene we witnessed at the opening of the British two-part series.
The truth is that these acts - the kind that make compelling dramas - really are part and parcel of suburban life.
Few of us don't know an anecdote about a friend or neighbour that stretches the boundaries of what we perceive to be 'normality': a very close friend of mine from Manchester in the north of England (she hails from as 'solid' a family as they come) has a cousin who axed his mother to death; a former colleague's neighbour poured the contents of a boiled kettle over her sleeping husband's private parts after discovering he had been unfaithful; a university friend was held hostage for three days by a boyfriend she was trying to leave (he pushed food through the door but made her pee in a bucket).
So when I watch dramas such as The Sculptress or Cracker (as I did for much of the weekend), I cannot help but think, 'there go I but by the grace of God'.
Indeed, my colleagues and I have been pondering the outcome of The Sculptress. I am convinced, along with writer Rosalind (an excellent Caroline Goodall), that obese Olive (Pauline Quirke) didn't kill and dismember her mother and sister on the floor of the family's semi.