distant Vancouver. The effect of this blankness - and perhaps it's just Dyer thinking rile this fucker and I'll get my ass handed to me in a hubcap, and no more complicated than that, but still - the effect is to render his interlocutor's mouth into a fulminating gaspipe.

Whoever is opposite him just talks and talks and talks and talks. They talk so much they even bamboozle themselves, as though it were all happening against their will, endless, like an exasperated airline stewardess going through her mantra before a collision.

Of course you're aware that a lot of what they're saying is rubbish. As human organs go, the memory is about as reliable as the penis, and these guys are mental to boot, with a history of inner-city riots, crack and torture grated on top. But oh, Danny boy!

That other genius interviewer of hardnuts, Ross Kemp, probably commands more immediate respect, but Danny's essential innocence beckons the baddies right into the confessional - where they royally hang themselves.

I'm telling you, this is Class A car crash telly (I will never forget French - an egomaniac of the first order - weeping insincerely over a grave like Cape Fear's Max Cady, whilst the camera came close enough to show his pristine white Y-fronts shining through his expensive tracksuit, hinting that possibly Sean was a cleanliness nut too, on top of everything else).

Actually, one can postulate with confidence before tuning in that each programme will contain at least one scene of the protagonist crying at a grave. The other week Danny interviewed a one-time loyalist paramilitary - now gay and living by the seaside with a bullet proof vest, a poodle, and a copy of Rod Stewart in concert - who filled right up when he remembered how his best friend Mad Dog nearly met his end at a UB40 concert.

That great stock character, the sentimental psychopath, has never been more alive and well.