TWO Northern actresses Suranne Jones and Lesley Sharp return to our TV screens tonight (Wed) for a new series of ‘Scott & Bailey.’
And if ever there were a worthy successor to telly’s original, highly successful lady cop duo ‘Cagney and Lacy’ then these two are it. Suranne, from Chadderton and known to die-hard Corrie fans as feisty  Karen Macdonald, and Lesley from Liverpool – a fine actress from many different dramas – are back in this sharply written and always interesting series.
It’s not just the format that works so well. Suranne and Lesley both play believably complex characters with the kind of thespian restraint that you only find these days in other quality drama like ‘Foyle’s War.’ It’s still gritty stuff, but they’re human enough for any viewer to identify with their situation.
At a time when women in police dramas tend to be intelligent eye-candy, it’s great to see two working characters with human foibles and weaknesses actually getting involved in criminal detection – sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. Just like real-life.