'Why aren't OUR new women TV detectives ever the boss?': As The Killing's Sarah Lund inspires a string of copycat British shows, JAN MOIR gets indignantly feminist...

The Killing, starring Sofie Grabol as Sarah Lund, has inspired a raft of new British crime drama

Oh Sarah Lund, grim-faced wearer of woolly jumpers and top cop of unremitting gloom and doom, what in the name of Forbrydelsen have you started?
Remember Detective Inspector Lund? She was the morose star of The Killing, the Danish police drama called Forbrydelsen back home that became a big hit in the UK and elsewhere.
Over three gory series we thrilled to dense plot-twists and turns. Got slapped around the chops by shoals of giant red herrings. Found ourselves oddly entranced as the endless rain fell on a murky Copenhagen.
In this watery flume of despair, The Killing was distinguished not just by depressed Lund in her hairy jumpers but also by its bleak landscapes, noir-ish tone and eerie, jangling background music.
Now there has been a slew of copycat Killings - not on the streets of the Danish capital this time, but across British television channels. Over recent weeks our small screens have been invaded by a squad of equally grim-faced detectives determined to out-gloom Sarah Lund. 
New whodunnit shows such as Broadchurch (ITV), Shetland (BBC) and Mayday (also BBC) have all featured crime-solving cops competing to see who can be the most lonely and enigmatic obsessive on the case - and on the planet.
You know what they say. One moody and troubled cop is a coincidence. Two is a trend. Three is the future of police procedural-based drama in this country for the next ten million years.
Inspired by The Killing and other Scandinavian tales of murder most foul, such as Wallander and The Bridge, the shows have several characteristics in common.
There is the same kind of spooky music. The same kind of lakes being dragged. The same dread feeling that underneath the surface of a tight-knit and ostensibly happy community, something horrible lurks. In some instances, the cops even have the same kind of woolly jumpers. 
One important thing - and it has to be said before we can move on. Although inspired by The Killing, none of the British series actually features a female detective in charge of the whole stabbing and shooting match. Perish the thought!
That might be taking things too far, guv. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to wear trousers and make arrests instead of brewing us a nice cuppa and typing up the witness statements. And that's just not on.

In Broadchurch, DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) has just been passed over for the top job by DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant). In Shetland, DC Alison 'Tosh' MacIntosh (Alison O'Donnell) plays second fiddle to DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall). She wears a duffel coat and is so dizzy she can't remember how to read suspects their rights properly.
Mayday has no central detective character in the traditional sense, but does have Fiona (Sophie Okonedo), a policewoman who has just left the force to concentrate on being a mother and raising her family. Even though she knows she is a better cop than her cop husband. That's got to hurt.
Like Sarah Lund, these women must keep their real feelings hidden as the murderer continues to elude their grasp and they negotiate the blizzard of bleak.

Olivia Coleman and David Tennant star in ITV's new crime drama Broadchurch, but Jan Moir is peeved about Tennant being Coleman's boss

So in the meantime, let us sift through the evidence, beat up the suspects in time-honoured tradition and ask the big question. Out of all the new Killing-lites and Killing-alikes, whodunnit best?
Most will say it is a clear win for Broadchurch, the suspenseful eight-part ITV drama with David Tennant. As Hardy, he has been deployed to a Dorset seaside town to solve the murder of 11-year-old Danny, whose body was found on the beach under the dramatic honey cliffs of the Jurassic Coast. It was meant to look like an accident, but moody Hardy smells a rat.

 

Is he a Lund-a-like? Well, he never smiles. He is a study in low-grade grump and is rude to everyone. Friends or lovers? None that we know of. Inner torment? Plenty. All we know is that Something Bad Happened on a previous case.
Hardy has panic attacks every time he thinks about it. His eyes are huge and black, oscillating above his velvety beard.
There are moments when he looks like a troubled vole. A vole who says things like 'everything matters now' with his mouth in a thin, white line.
He is awful to Miller, who keeps crying and giving him fish suppers and cups of tea. This week she lost it and threatened to 'p*** in a cup and throw it at you' when he was a bit disrespectful. Then she invited him for dinner with her family. I wish she'd make up her mind.
Suspects? Everyone from Pauline Quirke looking shifty in a caravan to the owner of the newsagent's where Danny had a paper round.
Nearly eight million people tuned in for this week's episode, which was tightly plotted and gripping despite the amusing smorgasbord of vastly different West Country accents. However, one important point. Surely DC Miller's pivotal relationship with the murder victim - her son was his best friend - would have meant that she was taken off the case?
The same thought occurred when the constable in Shetland - I mean both the two-part series and the eponymous island it is set on - discovered the body of his granny outside her cottage.
Instead of being sidelined into investigating a mitten found on a railing in downtown Lerwick, he just carried on working on the case. Is that even allowed?
Meanwhile, Shetland the drama was so Lund-inspired it has even been nicknamed The McKilling. Dougie Henshall strode around the treeless landscape, looking uncannily like Jeremy Vine and shouting at suspects in a macho way. Old men would cower at the sound of his boots and say things like: 'Ah've no left ma croft all night!'
However, I loved the dignified and thoughtful way he spoke to a bereaved mother in a scene at Lerwick airport. All too often the police are portrayed as one-dimensional brutes who care only about making a collar. Nice to see the other side for a change.
Jimmy has a nice selection of phlegm-coloured woollies that Sarah Lund would approve of. And when it comes to interior emotion, he has a great way of letting anguish wash across his face that is as Danish as a flitch of bacon.
Inner torment? I'll say. A dead wife and troubled teenage step-daughter? That will do nicely. 

On Shetland, Douglas Henshall, centre, plays DI Jimmy Perez, and his second-in-command is 'Tosh', played by Alison O'Donnel, right, who Moir complains 'is so dizzy she can't remember how to read suspects their rights properly'

His sidekick Tosh also wore shapeless jumpers - the colour of dried mustard, yuk - and said things like 'Professor Berglund has been telling porky pies'. 
While Shetland was perhaps the closest to the Scandi-ideal, Mayday certainly caught the downbeat, suffocating mood. Shown by the BBC over five days last week, it centred on the murder of Hattie, a 14-year-old village Mayday queen.
Creepy and confusing, it starred Sophie Okonedo as retired cop Fiona, smart enough to suspect the murderer from the beginning.
But it was a struggle for the rest of us to know what was going on. A bird's nest clue? A psychopathic Irishman? A man whose wife had turned his shed into a pottery workshop? There was witchcraft, erectile dysfunction and slo-mo shots - though these elements were not put together, thank goodness.
The ending might have been rather unsatisfactory - without giving anything away, how did she know? - but Mayday had terrific ensemble acting, morally complex characters and depth.
In the worlds of Broadchurch, Shetland and Mayday, nothing is ever what it seems. And just as in their Nordic noir counterparts, emotions are always deep-frozen, eyes never meet and the jumpers are always scratchy. 
Yet while each of these dramas held fast to the gloomy prototype, they were never quite as brilliant, as depressing or as startling as the originals. We need a Sarah Lund of our own for a start. How long must we wait before we get one?