Return of the Tough Cop 
Daily Mail, 7th July 2000 

by Christopher Matthew 

On Sunday afternoon former Wimbledon singles champion Pat Cash was the BBC's commentator on the historic charity battle royal between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg on the Buckingham Palace tennis courts. 

At one point, Cash described the extent to which he had based his own game on Borg's, and how a number of today's players had based their games on his. 

Watching Burnside last night, I couldn't help thinking how much Chris Ellison appears to have based his performance on John Thaw's DI Regan. 

Indeed, there were moments during this first episode when I felt I had been transported back to the glory days of The Sweeney - when criminals were routinely referred to as 'dirty, no-good slags' and suspects were subjected to dubious interrogation methods. 

Then, DIs got their man with the words 'you're nicked' and uppity, know-it-all young DCs were put in their place in no uncertain terms. 

Stroppy DC Sam Philips (Zoe Eeles) was predictably scornful of Burnside when he first arrived as her guv'nor at the elite National Crime Squad. 'What exactly have you got against him?' DS Dave Summers (Justin Pierre) wanted to know. 

'For a start, have you seen the colour of him?' she said. 'He's a sunbed freak. He's rusting. He's a dinosaur.' 

But Burnside soon had his moment in a bar when she was mouthing off at tedious length about how she didn't have to apologise for being a woman. 

'Sorry to stop you in mid-flow,' he said, 'but that geezer just nicked your handbag.' 

This spin-off from The Bill may not break new ground exactly, but it's none the less watchable for that - thanks largely to Ellison's looming, dangerous, unpredictable, and occasionally touching performance in the name role. 

'Reputations don't count for much,' his new boss, Supt Brian Lee (Andrew Readman), informs him on his first day with the NCS. 'It's teamwork that's important.' 

But, of course, we know very well that in Burnside's book that's a load of cobblers. We've already seen him sorting out a deranged Irish-man with an automatic pistol in the bar of a cross-channel steamer in his own inimitably zero-option way. 

And when he sees the grinning features of Ronnie 'The Razor' Buchan, the killer of his partner, advertising his newly published memoirs, A Cut-throat Business, on the side of a London bus, we can hardly blame him for losing his rag. 

'Now I've got the resources, I'm going to nick him,' Burnside assured his team. 

But not until he's found out who's supplying the high-quality, swastika-engraved guns that the irishman Matthew Hutchins (Michael Smiley) pulled on the cross-channel barmaid and that are about to be used by the Yardies in an upcoming gang war. 

Ellison is not alone in playing his part for all it's worth. Pierre and Eeles give great support as his loyal team, Paul Nicholas is wonderfully sinister as Buchan, and Tony Selby turned in a typically well-observed cameo as Summers's father and Burnside's ex-guv'nor - 'The best DI I ever worked for.' 

One of the most convincing scenes in the episode was when Burnside went round to Summers's house with a bottle of whisky and they sat there, chewing the fat over the old days and considering Dave's career in the force as a university graduate and the product of a mixed marriage. 

'The stuff they used to say in the canteen,' said his father, 'still gets me going.' 

'We were all desperate to be one of the chaps,' muttered Burnside. 

As if they still aren't.

© 

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