So, Endeavour Morse has dodged yet another bullet and sits languishing in a prison cell looking all forlorn, conflicted and sexy.

Yes, Sunday’s final episode of Endeavour proves, there is nothing like a copper on a mission to get the hearts racing. Maybe it’s the beauty of 1960s Oxford (all honey-coloured shots of Longwall Street and council estates with satellite dishes Photoshopped out) but even DI Fred Thursday has a certain charm, in that hat. No?

What is it with telly’s ability to make members of least snoggable professions look appealing, and even human? In the real world, estate agents and policemen are rarely up there on the nation’s hot list but the telly versions are often so great that you wouldn’t balk at the idea of going on holiday with them. And hey, that way you’d get away from the homicide capital of the world that is Colin Dexter’s retro Oxfordshire, which is a relief.

While mini-Morse plots his revenge off-screen (the third series should splash next year), Vera is hopping into his toasty 8pm Sunday slot.

This is the fourth series following no-nonsense DCI Vera Stanhope stomping about Northumberland trying to unravel the latest murder.

Based on Ann Cleeves’ bestselling novels, Vera really could be played as a bitter old biddy but the sublime Brenda Blethyn in the role, she is a legend.

The ITV bosses must have been dancing around their briefcases when they got Blethyn signed up in the role. Because the woman is pure class: an actor who can shine from the stage, the small screen and the big screen – see her in Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies for a masterclass in how to be both heartbreakingly sad and also funny at the same time.

So, she manages to turn the cliche of eccentric, lonely detective (oh, aren’t they all) into a living, breathing icon. Dressed up in about a million layers of khaki-coloured clobber and with a tinny on the go, when Vera’s on the case (in Sunday’s episode, the case of a pensioner killed on a Newcastle train during rush-hour), you know justice is coming.

There were, however, no police back in the day Jamaica Inn was set, which might be why it was such an unsolved blimmin mystery.

Stumbling across this brooding TV version of Daphne du Maurier’s book on BBC1 this week (now on iPlayer), you need a detective to figure out the plot.

Four times I rewound the first three minutes, in which dark and mysterious heroine Mary (Downton’s Jessica Brown Findlay) was BITING the hand of pub landlord Joss (Sean Harris), to find out why the hell this oddity was happening.

All I got was “mumble mumble” [scornful look] “mumble mumble”. So I just had to go with it and assume it was some old-school West Country pub greeting.

Joss either bellowed like the beast of Bodmin Moor or whispered in such a menacing fashion that you could not understand a word, forcing you to shout “EY?!” at the screen like your grandmother.

But hey, what Jamaica Inn sorely lacked in understandable plot (apart from characters trudging about in muddy clothes, projecting blistering lust/rage at each other) it more than made up for in atmosphere.

With its forlorn, Hardy-era rural brutality (think sexy peasants forced to plough until their hands bleed), Devon looks like the Wild West... with drizzle. Weariness oozes on to the screen, making you feel warm and cosy by comparison, even without a hot cop in sight.