The elementary world of the TV detective When Morse, shortly before Thaw died in real life, died on screen, it seemed only natural that Lewis should move up a notch and take over the vacant spot. But those who contend that Kevin Whately could never replace Thaw's Morse were missing out on the real contender, Lewis's assistant Hathaway, played by Laurence Fox. Theological scholar and champion oarsman, Hathaway was plausible as the prodigy who knew everything. All Lewis knew was a thing or two, but he was wise. This pattern of the assistant knowing all kinds of things but the top guy knowing what counts is basic to the British detective story on screen. It started off in print, in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Benedict Cumberbatch is now back on screen as Sherlock (BBC One, Sunday). Due to the overload of techno talk, I found the first episode of the new season almost incomprehensible, but the format couldn't function at all without a Watson (Martin Freeman) for Holmes to be wiser than, even though - perhaps because - Watson plods with exemplary diligence. This standard television relationship of super detective and solid assistant is by now a British thing. A plethora of role models must give comfort to all of us who are born to follow rather than lead. We can learn to nod our head resignedly as the brilliant boss races off into trouble. It fulfils our dreams of the ideal partnership, whether professional or personal. But the Americans hardly ever do it any more. Back in the day, they gave us The Streets of San Francisco, which apart from Michael Douglas's dimple had essentially the same layout as Batman. But now, instead of the pairing, they give us the team, almost as if The A-Team, one of the worst TV shows ever, had been the universal template for the crime series in modern times. In the CSI franchise, whatever the putative city of origin, the screen is occupied by a team. There might be a wise man in charge (that's what David Caruso is doing with his mouth in CSI Miami: looking wise) but he has a whole platoon of experts backing him up and no chief spends much time training a tyro. A more extreme version of the CSI format is NCIS, where the team rarely leaves headquarters. With Mark Harmon in charge, it's like a closed ward full of nerds, including the entertainingly batty female nerd in the pigtails. Criminal Minds, also equipped with a jokey nerdess, is currently my favourite development of the American format, which you might think to be a straitjacket until you take a close look and realise just how weird this particular show is. The team is so completely institutionalised that it physically can't leave the office except to travel by private jet, a Gulfstream that appeals to all my back-to-the-womb fantasies. In 1970 Dino de Laurentiis was the bag-man for Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo, which had a cast of thousands in the days when a thousand was still composed of people and not computer-generated images. I have always thought Bondarchuk's War and Peace so hopelessly overpraised that I avoided Waterloo for more than 40 years in order to save a few hours of life, but last week I accidentally stumbled across it on my thousand-channel TV set and found it close to magnificent. The plot made sense of the military strategy, the action was logical, and Christopher Plummer made a perfect Duke of Wellington. If someone else than Rod Steiger had played Napoleon it might have been a masterpiece. Steiger always had hamming tendencies and by this time he was just a pair of pursed lips talking faster than you could follow, well on the way to his apotheosis in Mars Attacks!. But not even he could quite dissipate the film's dignity. It just goes to show that you hardly ever know. Sire, the battle is lost. Not much of a line, maybe, but you have to see where it fits in. Ditching his Sherlock persona temporarily, Benedict Cumberbatch appeared as himself in The Rattigan Enigma. He mercifully avoided the tyro presenter's usual tricks of overemphasis and mad gesture, but if anything he rather underdid it, leaving the commas out so that he was sometimes hard to follow. Rattigan's high style of comfort was shown to contrast piquantly with the torments induced by his double life. Thank providence that we shall have no more of that. It happened a while ago now, but I only just saw Laurie Taylor's interview with Christopher Hitchens on Sky Arts. The Hitch was on his next to last legs but still dauntingly fast on his feet, as it were. The questioning was far too polite to suit his style but he coped. For an hour he was there. Then I turned off the TV set and he was gone.