Telly-fantastique!

Whoever said hacks weren't lookers?

For all my garbled ramblings on film I often neglect it's poorer, less glamorous sibling - the humble telly box.

Well not this evening, OHHHH NO.

Tonight it's getting my full attention, and not just because my brain has been sapped of all activity following a day of NCTJ law exams...but also due to an excellent two-part BBC Scotland drama, The Field of Blood.

This adaptation of Denise Mina's best-selling novel is set in the Daily News office in 1982 and follows the plight of "newsboy"  Paddy (up-and-coming talent Jayd Johnson) as she struggles to be taken seriously in the male dominated, and joyless, industry of journalism.

I'd look worried too if Malcolm Tucker was giving me that face

More than just an edge-of-your-seat who dunnit, of which my mother is a massive fan, this IS that but it's also a dark and humorous exposé of the way news rooms were run in the days before Google *HORRIFIED GASPS*

This depiction of a working environment fuelled by heavy drinking, chain-smoking, sexism and callousness is the exact reason I'm getting into journalism. Everybody wants to be a hack... (to the tune of Everybody Wants to be a Cat)

Jayd Johnson impresses in her role of brave, go-getter Paddy, in a time that she was told journalists were either mean old hacks or short-skirted little chickies who used their *ahem* charms to get ahead.

Funnyman Ford Kiernan, of Chewing the Fat and Still Game fame, does a convincing and amusing turn as a smarmy blood-lusting hack, keen to get the scoop on all things grizzly in order to fill the columns.

One can only assume he's on hold to Specsavers *chortles*

Whilst David Morrissey ticks all the right boxes as Glasgow Daily News boss, Murray "the devil" Devlin.
He is assertive, aggressive and rude. And oh.so.dreamy.

But alas, I DIGRESS, don't be fooled by my light-hearted bantering; this is as grizzly and dark as it is entertaining.

Let's hope the second part lives up to the first. Watch this space...

The Field of Blood is on BBC1 at 9pm TONIGHT (i.e. right now)
Or catch it on BBC Iplayer