We Are Detective, We Are Select

Or so said the Thompson Twins, in their slightly odd 80s hit. Liars all, for we now know they weren't detectives at all, but pop stars. The following is a list of people who weren't crime fighters either, because they don't exist. However, they do all feature in some top TV shows.

Ironside
Sure, you may be San Francisco's top cop, but a bullet in the spine is always going to put a crimp in your day. Despite his jogging days being over, Robert T. Ironside dons his wheelchair and carries on cracking down on crime, assisted by (alongside a top Quincy Jones theme tune) the slightly bumbling Ed, posh girl working with plod Eve and young neer-do-well trying to turn good Mark.

Initially running in the late 60s, Ironside had to deal with the changing times. One episode had the team visiting a house full of hippy layabouts, one of whom describes our hero as "fuzz on wheels". To his credit, the man doesn't call on a bunch of cops armed with bats to crack some skulls and keep all their stash to help with his pain management.

Some 20 years later, the cast all got back together for a dodgy TV movie made not long before Raymond Burr shuffled off his mortal coil. It wasn't very good.

Quincy
Your favourite coroner, however, had no time for the modern fashions. Infamously, Quince once put down "punk rock" as a cause of death in an episode worth watching just for cheap giggles. Seriously, see it sometime soon.

These people are punks, apparently. Well, except Quincy. Obviously

Despite not having a first name, Dr Quincy M.E. managed to balance his personal life of pissing about on a yacht with young ladies, his normal work duties of cutting up corpses and solving a neverending stream of murders on the streets of LA.

This was lucky for his cop friends, Monaghan and Brill, who were so inept they made Chief O'Hara from Batman look like Sherlock Holmes. Every week, they would dismiss the Doc's suspicions of foul play, only for the evidence to stack up. Luckily, Quincy's boss, Dr Aston, tolerated his extracurricular activities, despite the growing number of dead bodies stacking up down the morgue.

KITT
Can it, Hasselhoff! The car was the real star of Knight Rider, and my five-year-old self will hear no different. The guy in the stupidly tight jeans was only needed to go round up the bad guys when it involved going indoors.

For one thing, KITT (or the Knight Industries Two Thousand, if you weren't around in the 1980s) was probably the coolest looking car ever seen on TV. See?

Cool as fuck

Plus he had the best theme tune you could wish. Brilliant. And you could play Pac-Man with him. I mean, what more do you want? He solves crime, has a line in banter, and he can get you home from the pub when you're totally blasted.

Jethro Gibbs
Silver-haired fox Gibbs takes no shite from nobody: as a former Marine sniper, he's probably ventilated more heads then you've had hot dinners. Subsequently swapping the uniform to solve crimes in the US navy as part of NCIS, you can be assured that if you're a dead sailor, he'll get to the bottom of it. And pray to your god if you've been mean to a little kid, because you'll be in for a heavy duty smackdown.

Gibbs may well be on this list because I aspire to be like him - as my hair greys, he's proof that it's a look that can be pulled of and like me, he has a weakness to red haired women. All I need is a team including a wisecracking womaniser, an ex-Israeli assassin, a computer geek and a perky goth covered in tattoos and I'm away.

Shawn Spencer
Save the best till last. Star of the best show of the last 20 years (Psych), Shawn uses his outstanding skills of observation and deduction to doss a living from solving crime.

Why is he great? Well, he's an idle git who'd rather be lazing in bed, listening to Tears for Fears while waiting for the Royal Rumble to start. What's not to like? Luckily, in terms of his career, he has a supportive best friend, Gus, and an ex-cop dad able to help under, albeit under some duress.

Add 80s pop reference here

It's all brilliant, and I seem to find myself recommending it to everyone I meet. Sherlock? Get away with you! Psych is funnier, brilliant guest stars (Cary Elwes! Judd Nelson! Ally Sheedy!) and a better looking cast. I still don't get why he didn't chase after the character played by Rachel Leigh Cook, though.