The Ass Detective

OK people, I've got another great idea for a TV series. This time its one of those gritty US crime series. The key with all detective series is that the protagonist has to have a quirky way of solving crimes: Columbo, for instance, irritates people into confessing; the people in CSI apply science to solve mysteries; on this side of the Atlantic Inspector Morse uses rationality and drinks beer in order to catch murderers. Sometimes the quirks don't seem to have any crime-solving relevance: Frank Cannon was just fat, Miss Marple knitted a lot and Monk is obsessive-compulsive. So here's my idea - the ass detective: he solves crimes by feeling people's butts. His technique is a bit like phrenology, where you 'read' the shape of someone's head. Except he uses asses.

Basically, this guy is an ex-NYPD detective called Crackowski, or something like that, who was kicked off the force after forcing some rich kid he suspected of being a serial killer to drop his pants and bend over in the precinct house toilets, before groping his ass. In the subsequent Internal Affairs investigation it turned out that Crackowski had a collection of over two thousand polaroids of juvenile asses. Now he works freelance, hanging around the city's toilets and massage parlours, trying to get glimpses of suspected criminal asses. All the while he's determined to prove the rich kid who got him canned is really guilty. I see the part as being perfect for Dennis Franz from NYPD Blue. Let's face it, he just looks like the kind of guy you'd find groping asses in grimy back alleys.

The way I envisage it, every week the police are left baffled by some heinous crime - despite having a prime suspect, they just can't manage to get sufficient evidence to bring a case. Enter the ass detective. He finds some way of insinuating himself into the suspect's life - posing as a male prostitute, maybe - so as to get himself close to their ass. Finally he manages to get his hands on their butt, and gets the evidence he needs. Cue bare-assed car chase, bad guy caught with his pants down, case closed, roll end titles. Great, huh? Of course, if push came to shove, it could all be relocated in Britain, where it would have to be called the arse detective, and his name would probably be Phil McCavity. But I think it needs a gritty urban US setting to really work.