Not pick Poirot as our greatest detective? That's criminal: Character who should have been automatic winner not even shortlisted for TV awards The character Hercule Poirot has not been shortlisted for the Radio Times Detective Award The greatest crime in television history will be committed this week - and we are all accomplices. For the first time in 60 years, a trophy has been created to celebrate the best TV detective. The National Television Awards (NTA) will include a special category letting viewers vote for their favourite sleuth. It seems inexplicable that there has never before been a separate prize for the best crime drama - a genre that has been thrilling us for generations. This year, finally, we have the Radio Times TV Detective Award. But the outstanding candidate, the one detective - and the actor who so memorably played him - who should have been an automatic winner, is not even on the shortlist. The six people nominated for the prize to be awarded on Wednesday are Olivia Colman and David Tennant from the ITV drama Broadchurch, about a murder by the seaside; Idris Elba, who plays the obsessive DCI Luther; Suranne Jones as Rachel Bailey in Scott & Bailey, about two female cops in Manchester; Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock; and Bradley Walsh as the veteran Detective Superintendent Ronnie Brooks in Law & Order: UK. Which leaves one great detective - who bowed out last November after 25 years in a role that set a new benchmark for all crime serials - conspicuous by his absence. Can't guess? You must apply the little grey cells, mon ami... Hercule Poirot, the fussy, brilliant Belgian detective who has featured in 70 lavishly staged adventures since 1989, is the most complete creation ever seen in a TV crime drama - and last year the actor David Suchet signed off with the perfect blend of smug flourish and sheer genius. To ignore Poirot does more than devalue the Best Detective award: it renders it worthless. Those on the shortlist range from the praiseworthy to the merely plausible. Best of the six is Olivia Colman, who stole every scene in Broadchurch, the story of a child killed in an English seaside town. Viewers tuned in expecting to lap up another powerful performance from former Doctor Who star David Tennant, only to be swept away by Colman's emotional range as Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller. She was stubborn and motherly, angry at being passed over for promotion and shattered by the murder of her friend's son. Every time her pain-filled eyes welled over with tears, we suffered with her. Colman deserves to be heaped with awards. The fact is, though, that Broadchurch is a new series, not yet part of our national culture. Say the names Dixon of Dock Green, or Inspector Morse, or Jack Regan of the Sweeney, and everyone knows the character. That isn't true of DS Ellie Miller. And while Tennant was powerful as disgraced DI Alec Hardy, driving himself to a heart attack to exorcise his demons, he was a supporting actor, not the show's fulcrum. The only convincing rival to Colman for the award is Benedict Cumberbatch, who concluded the third series of Sherlock last week with an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's best Holmes tale, The Adventure Of Charles Augustus Milverton, about a ruthless blackmailer. Cumberbatch has been acclaimed for his portrayal of Holmes as a sociopathic nerd with an offbeat sexual allure so powerful that his pheromones could start a riot in a convent. But what started in 2010 as a clever reinvention of the deerstalker detective very quickly became rather predictable. Nine 90-minute episodes is all it has taken for the show to come close to exhausting itself. Measure those nine episodes against the 11-year series starring the definitive Holmes, Jeremy Brett. With his aquiline face, extravagant gestures and camp menace, Brett was both colder and more engaging than Cumberbatch. Two of those nominated for the prize to be awarded on Wednesday are Olivia Colman and David Tennant from the ITV drama Broadchurch Brett's Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes started in 1984 and brought a lavish new level of detail to television crime. The adaptations were faithful to the stories, though never slavish. There were no gimmicks, just fine acting, which makes the series as fresh as it was 30 years ago. Will Cumberbatch's Sherlock seem ageless in 2043? More likely it will seem dated, a shallow joke from the past. Suranne Jones's performance as Rachel Bailey has been strong, but the series hinges on the friendship between Bailey and DC Janet Scott, played by Lesley Sharp. You can't possibly crown one half of the duo the nation's favourite detective and not the other. It's a decent quality drama with strong female leads, co-written by Sally Wainwright, creator of Last Tango In Halifax. DC Bailey's personal life is every inch the disaster zone that we've come to expect from coppers devoted to the job. But there's nothing innovative or challenging about the show; even the title, with its pointless pun on the phrase "motte and bailey," is feeble. Luther, meanwhile, is one of the worst offenders when it comes mortuary porn - the tendency in BBC crime dramas to feature the dissection of at least one topless female corpse on the morgue slab in every episode. Ripper Street and The Fall are other culprits. And there is nothing about Luther to inspire fondness in the viewers. For a man who makes such an irritating gameshow host on The Chase, Bradley Walsh is an excellent actor and easily the best thing about the British remake of a formulaic American drama, Law And Order: UK. That's not difficult, though. The plots are mechanical, the characters expendable, the crimes forgettable and the dialogue execrable. Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock is also nominated and is Olivia Coleman's strongest rival for the award It's a disappointing shortlist - and there's one very good reason for that. The shortlist was selected by votes placed online, which helps to explain why characters that appeal to a younger audience have made it through to the final round. Those who watch Lewis and Midsomer Murders are less likely to vote in online polls than teenagers and 20-somethings who tweet their way through Sherlock. But nothing can excuse the exclusion of the strongest candidate, the man who was nominated for a Best Actor Bafta in the role more than 20 years ago and who has brought crime drama to a peak of perfection never rivalled on television. David Suchet's Poirot began as a collection of mannerisms: the twirl of his moustache, the mincing walk, the accent, the murmured references to his little grey cells. But over time, Suchet developed the part into something deep, subtle and often touching. Though the best of Agatha Christie's plots had been used up years ago, Suchet was never stale. Last autumn he achieved something no actor has ever dreamed of: he completed the entire cycle of 70 Poirot stories, spinning compelling drama from such unpromising novels as The Big Four and Elephants Can Remember - two of Dame Agatha's least successful books. And he finished with an extraordinary flourish, solving a crime from his sickbed in his swansong episode Curtain, and adding a fatal twist that retained all the shock value of the novel's first appearance almost 40 years ago. Period drama does not appeal to every crime fan. The pre-war fashions and Thirties props, from steam trains to silver-topped canes, that make Poirot such a visual joy might be tiresome for some younger viewers. But every one of the five crime dramas on the NTA shortlist is set in the present day - and that betrays a miserable lack of imagination among the voters. It is as if younger viewers, the ones voting online with their smartphones, cannot believe in television that does not resemble the world immediately outside their windows. Worse still, they seem incapable of appreciating the extraordinary achievement of Suchet, with his flawless portrayal of a beloved character across a quarter of a century. If the National Television Awards can't honour that, the bauble is not worth having.