Murder Most Puzzling review: You'll be left puzzled by Channel 5's new crime drama, where Prue Leith meets Taggart

At first glance, it bears all the hallmarks of the 'cosy crime' boom – an English country town with the comfortingly bucolic name of Bakerbury, an amateur sleuth in late middle age, sundry bosy-bodies and bumpkins.

But after a sickly-sweet, pastel-hued opening scene, it takes a sudden u-turn to a rain-sodden graveyard, where the shoeless body of a young woman has been found, murdered.

And the jarring notes don't stop there.

Our sharp-witted crime-buster, Cora Felton (Phyllis Logan), is known as 'The Puzzle Lady', on account of her being a famous crossword-compiler with a nice – and apparently, lucrative - sideline in baked goods.

But when we first encounter her, she is slumped asleep in her car after a drunken night out – thinking nothing of drink-driving through the lanes surrounding Bakerbury to her country home.

And rather than being a quiet-as-a-mouse Marple type, content to fade into the background to observe the dark doings of those around her, ex-pat Scot Cora bustles around making herself persona non grata at the local police station, invading the privacy of grieving parents and poking around the crime scenes.

Throw in a liberal sprinkling of effing and jeffing, Cora's habit of sparking up a gasper whenever she feels a bit stressed, and a liking for chunky necklaces and bright knitwear and The Puzzle Lady comes on as a cross between Prue Leith and Taggart.

And yes, there's definitely 'bin a murrrrdah'.

Three, in fact, all done in with hammer blows, as well as a fatal car crash in the past – which inspires a less-than-cosy, decidedly off-colour visual gag – and talk of sexual role-play gone wrong.

Bakerbury, meanwhile, is hardly the Cotswold-stone idyll of Midsomer, or the medieval chapels of Cambridge.

It seems more like a down-at-heel market town, with a pee-stained multi-storey car park and a sink estate on the edge of town populated by track-suited yobbos.

This uneasy mix of the cosy and the corrupt continues into the supporting cast, with Cora's niece Sherry (Charlotte Hope) hiding a dark secret involving her ne-er-do-well husband, while Cora herself is not really the puzzle lady she's cracked up to be.

The main thing about this murder-mystery, however, is that it finds it hard to sustain interest over its two -hour running time, stretching out the 'crossword clue on the body' mystery before discounting it, the various suspects being questioned and released, questioned and released, and everyone we run into seemingly fancying themselves as a detective.

Except, of course, the actual detectives themselves, who are totally dependent on everyone else doing the police work while being shouted at by the dim local mayor in one scene every 15 minutes, regular as clockwork.

Phyllis Logan does seem to enjoy playing Cora, though, and at least she is not the stereotypical grey-haired sleuth in pearls and twin-set.

She loves knocking back the mid-morning bloody Marys, and you believe her when she lets slip the odd F-word, as if you can take Cora out of the Gorbals, but you can't take the Gorbals out of Cora.

“Hair of the dog,” she tells her niece. “besides, I'm going to need a boost if I'm going to solve this murder.”

Condensed to a tight one-hour, Murder Most Puzzling would holds its own, but over two hours you can't ignore the inconsistencies in plot and tone which leaving you feeling slightly down and a bit cross.