The makers of LA Heat (STAR World, 8pm) boast of the show's extra 10 minutes of on-screen violence per episode, as compared to other so-called action series, and it is easy to see why.
The new series begins with a hail of bullets and a rogue cop armed with a flame-thrower, which he uses to blow up the bad guys and several vehicles, even while they are driving away.
The latter is, of course, the hi-tech equivalent of shooting a man in the back, but never mind.
It soon becomes apparent that the extra budget required to create all these fireworks has been taken from the writing department, and that the producers have in fact lifted the main characters almost entirely from the Lethal Weapon film series.
Steven Williams plays the Danny Glover character, an older, calmer cop with many years on the job, and Wolf Larson is Chase (Mel Gibson), young, crazy and dangerous to know.
The twist in his character is that he has a creative side. His girlfriend simply cannot understand why he actually wants to be a policeman when he could be an artist. 'You could make as much money in two years with your art as you could in 20 in the police force,' she tells him crossly, clearly a girl who believes in the Andy Warhol/Julian Schnabel approach to modern art.
