Bizzie Rascal?:The Responder.

"I want to be a good bobby. I want to do good things. I want to be normal" - Chris Carson.

That's what he tells his therapist, at least, and, for the most part, it seems to be the case. But Chris Carson (Martin Freeman) is a man on the edge. He's a man in trouble. His mother, June (Rita Tushingham), is in a nursing home and it's costing him more money than he earns and he's been demoted at work and now works nightshifts dealing with drunks, domestic abuse cases, paedophile accusations, and dead bodies in tower blocks.

It's hardly a surprise he's in therapy. He appears to have a loving wife, Kate (MyAnna Buring), and an adoring, and adorable, child, Tilly (Romi Hyland-Rylands), but a hole in the bathroom door, about fist height, first seen as Carson brushes his teeth tells us a different story about his home life.

The Responder (BBC1/iPlayer, directed by Tim Mielants, Philip Barantini, and Fien Troch and written, quite clearly from raw personal experience, by former Liverpool copper Tony Schumacher) tells the story, unflinchingly, of how Carson tries to exorcise his demons and become a better person while, at the same time, trying to keep the night-time streets of Liverpool safe.

One exchange with his mother is particularly telling. "Everyone matters", June tells her son after he expresses doubt about the usefulness of his work. "They don't, mam, not really", a beaten down and world weary Carson sighs in return. But when the chance comes for Carson to genuinely do some good in his life, instead of - as he has it - playing whack-a-mole, will he be able to rise to the occasion?

Will he be allowed to. His unorthodox approach to coppering (threatening to throw dogs from balconies and stealing cigarettes from corpses) has made him more than a few enemies and when he's teamed with the young and idealistic police officer Rachel Hargreaves (Adelayo Adedayo) they immediately begin to clash heads over not just his methods but his morality - and his mental state.

Not that everything's rosy in Rachel's garden either. Her boyfriend Steve (Philip Barantini) is, from the off, clearly a wrong 'un and seems likely to continue to cause her problems. He's not the only one acting suspiciously. Why is Carson's former colleague Ray Mullen (Warren Brown) hanging around Kate so much? On the surface he appears to be investigating Carson internally but his methods are no less unorthodox than those of his quarry.

Dr Diane Gallagher (Christine Tremarco) is another who's not who she appears to be either. Her bedside manner is not particularly comforting and her husband Greg (James Nelson-Joyce) appears a difficult man to warm to. Even Carson's therapist Lynne (Elizabeth Berrington) is stressed, overworked, and seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Which makes for a charged atmosphere all round. But when local 'baghead' and rough sleeper Casey (Emily Fairn) steals a holdall full of cocaine from dealer Carl Sweeney (Ian Hart in a quite ludicrous wig), Carson can't help but be drawn in. Not least because him and Sweeney have history. History that has somehow resulted in Carson running favours for Sweeney alongside his police work.

A conflict of priorities for sure but then Carson's life, and The Responder, is all about conflict of priorities. From the split second decisions Carson must make that will play out, down the years, in both his career and his family life to the attempts by Sweeney to retrieve his drugs and on to those of Casey and her hapless sidekick, the dim but well meaning small time crook Marco (Josh Finan), to sell those same drugs and make a better life for themselves.

You're never totally sure what anybody's motivation is. Is Carson corrupt, is he cracking up, or he is a paragon of moral virtue in a world that's gone completely mad? Is he, perhaps, all three. Sweeney may be a drug dealer who's often flanked by the vicious goons Barry (Mark Womack) and Ian (Philip Shaun McGuinness) but he's also a family man who dotes on his wife Jodie (Faye McKeever) and child Lexie (Lois Cringle) and drives a sensible looking Audi.

Untangling all of this makes for a compelling, if not as tense as some had warned me and perhaps not the five star review that Lucy Mangan dished out for The Guardian, watch and though The Responder tackles themes all too common in recent TV dramas (homelessness, drugs, mental health, and, as ever, toxic masculinity) it does so in new, and mostly believable, ways.

Which clearly leaves The Responder in danger of being too bleak a watch. Occasional shots of urban foxes and garden gnomes do little to mitigate against that but the gallows humour you'd expect to find in such scenarios does. There's a drunk driving vicar whose trousers fall down, a girl hiding in a bin from the Sheriff of Nottingham, and when Casey makes the unfeasibly self-aware comment "I'm a smackhead. Thinking shit through's not our strong point" it's difficult to suppress a snigger.

None of which is to say that The Responder is a comedy. It definitely isn't. But in real life people say, and do, funny things and The Responder, quite clearly, shows us real life. Real life from some of the darkest corners of society and real life from some of the darkest corners of the human mind. It was an interesting place to visit but to live there, like Chris Carson, it's hard to see how it wouldn't completely grind you down.