As a devout lover of all things crime-drama-TV, I must say that while bad crime dramas are better than no crime dramas at all (at least if there's nothing else on), sometimes my beloved television subgenre offers up a series that seems like it'll work, but doesn't quite make it happen. Such is the case with Wycliffe.

This British import has the pedigree and narrative paradigm of a grand, accented set of episodes - Jack Shepherd plays Detective Charles Wycliffe, a cranky crime-solver who keeps the Cornish seaside safe from criminals of all shapes, sizes and creeds - but after a few episodes of this Second Series set, I found myself losing interest. Yeah, this set offers escaped insane killers (All for Love), secretive arsonists (Four and Twenty Blackbirds), and archaeological thieves (Wild Oats), but for one reason or another, Wycliffe offers few reasons for crime-drama aficionados to fall in love with it.

The cast isn't the problem - Shepherd makes an excellent eponymous detective, and his two comrades, Lucy Lane (Helen Masters) and Doug Kersey (Jimmy Yuill) offer intriguing emotional and narrative conundrums for Wycliffe and his team. Nor is the writing lacking in any capacity: Based on the writings of author W.J. Burley, every installment of Wycliffe on this set is nothing short of perfectly capable in terms of dangling the whodunit carrot long enough to keep viewers interested in where each episode ends up. As evasive a comment as it is, Wycliffe: Series Two simply doesn't have that spark that gives certain crime dramas the pedigrees they have.

It's a capable series, yet not a classic one.