Screaming toddlers and paper-thin hotel walls. Cold poached eggs on your 'full English' breakfast. That hen party from Wolverhampton hogging the karaoke.
Turkey can be a great place for a budget package holiday, but it's a gamble. So many things might ruin it — though you have to hope your all-inclusive deal doesn't feature a corpse in the swimming pool.
Istanbul multi-millionaire Mesut (Baris Kislak), on The Turkish Detective, wasn't the sort to book a budget twin room at a three-star resort. His luxury villa was practically a private hotel for one. But he still ended up in the deep end, face down and strangled.
If you encounter something similar on your hols, ask for a refund. Mind you, there shouldn't be any trouble finding a poolside sun lounger after that.
Adapted from the crime novels by Barbara Nadel (more than two dozen of them), The Turkish Detective plunges into a world hidden from tourists. Haluk Bilginer plays Inspector Cetin Ikmen, a showboating maverick and chain-smoker whose team hero-worships him.
The Turkish Detective, from left to right, Ayse Farsakoglu (Yasemin Kay Allen), Cetin Ikmen (Haluk Bilginer), Mehmet Suleyman (Ethan Kai)
A refugee from Scotland Yard, Mehmet Suleyman (Ethan Kai) — rulebound, smart, eager to impress but shocked by his new boss's unorthodox tactics
Ikmen drives with such recklessness that even the taxi drivers get out of his way. He takes the same approach to questioning suspects — barging past security goons to gatecrash a drug baron's party, or winning a computer hacker's trust by handing over his own online bank account details.
Such cocky grandstanding might get tiresome, if he weren't also a devoted family man and intuitive student of human psychology.
Into his orbit stumbles a refugee from Scotland Yard, Mehmet Suleyman (Ethan Kai) — rulebound, smart, eager to impress but shocked by his new boss's unorthodox tactics.
If all this sounds familiar, perhaps that's because it's the same set-up as Life On Mars. Suleyman hasn't fallen through a timewarp into the 1970s era of Gene Hunt, but policing in Istanbul is the next best thing. And it comes with the bonus of picture- postcard cityscapes and snapshots of urban street food.
The first two episodes followed an investigation into the murder of an internet fashion influencer and her super-rich fiancé. The circle of suspects was limited: the killer had to be either the girl's father or her brother.
As the stakes kept rising with every twist, things became a little silly during the second episode. Suleyman and fellow detective Ayse (Yasemin Kay Allen) were lured to the docks, where snipers trained laser sights on their foreheads while the drug lord delivered a lecture about the importance of paying for your dinner.
This could have been a complicated metaphor, or he might have been frustrated about dine-and-dash customers at his chain of noodle restaurants — I was getting confused by this point.
The climax was even more baffling, as the murder victim's brother turned out to be a feminist-hating suicide bomber intent on blowing up the school where Ikmen's daughter was a pupil.
Perhaps the scriptwriters had indulged in a couple too many alcopop cocktails. That's always a danger on those all-you-can-drink package holidays.
