About 8.20 one Thursday evening I tweeted that I had somehow ended up watching a traffic police series. One of the annoying things about Sky Plus – not quite as annoying as it not being Virgin Media’s TiVo or anywhere near as annoying as our not being in a cabled area – is that if you press Stop during a recording it doesn’t take you back to the menu, it dumps you back onto live television. I have never learned this and always press Stop when the end credits of Top Gear signal the end of another week’s edu-tainment. I instinctively press the Mute button on my TV whenever I think I might end up on something normal and on it went. I checked my phone to see if anything had happened during Top Gear. It hadn’t. My eye was distracted by footage of a car chase.

"Pathetic" I scoffed and went back to my iPhone. The chase continued.

"Are they ever going to catch him/her/it?" I asked disdainfully. Back to my phone.

"Come on" I urged after two or three minutes. "I wonder what he/she/it has done wrong?"

I unpressed the Mute button in the hope that the voice over would enlighten me. I can’t remember what the perp – to use the wrong jargon I’m sure – had done but his ass was banged to rights by a pair of officers who looked like the health and safety guy who got me my special chair at work paired with Al Murray’s Pub Landlord. The sarcastic voice over was provided by former television personality Jamie Theakston.

Why I stuck with it after the first chase had come to its naturally and highly trained conclusion can be summed up with one of two words and I’m not sure which it was to be honest. The first contender is "apathy" – was I comfy and not too appalled, with nothing else to do with my evening beyond recrimination and self-loathing? Thinking of something else to do might’ve felt like just too much effort. I’m dubious about this because although I do spend a lot of my spare time on recrimination and self-loathing I don’t tend to watch crap TV while I do it. It’s a common excuse for watching bilge – "it was on" – and that’s never been one of my standard excuses for things. The other main excuse is "my girlfriend likes it" but if anything I’ve put her on to Traffic Cops and am at this very moment probably being blamed for it over lunch.

The second possible word is "Shona". This seems more likely. Shona is a magician in uniform. She only has to drive past someone at 30 miles to the hour to know if they’ve ever done anything wrong in their lives. If they have, she’ll nab them. This week a guy flew past in a heartbeat and she knew from the colour of his cheeks that something wasn’t right. And it wasn’t – in his car was a bag of stolen goods and three people for whom warrants had been issued. Shona is nothing short of awesome and gives the police a good name. Ok so sometimes "instinct" is also known as "stopping people for no reason other than you don’t like the look of them" but in every example that has been cleared for broadcast she’s been right. She may also be really pretty but I assure you I haven’t noticed.

The strength of a show like Traffic Cops obviously rests in the people they follow. This series has a good mix of officers – no obvious (or obnoxious) "characters" like Jeremy ruddy Spake – from the lovely Shona to awesome old Keith who is 98 years old and still driving like Nigel Mansell in pursuit of villains. He got stuck in a woman’s garden this week after he vaulted over a wall and found he couldn’t get out. I want Keith to by my uncle. Except I’ve already got an uncle called Keith (who used to be in the police) so that would be too confusing.

My fear was that the show would be one of those which just stitches together road accidents from CCTV cameras and expects the audience to laugh along with carnage and bent metal. Instead it is a very humanising programme which lets us get to know a group of men and women who do a frequently hated but absolutely vital job. The humour – such as there is – comes not from laughing at carnage but instead laughing at poor fools who think they can outsmart trained officers. The lies they tell in the forlorn hope of escaping justice can be comical. Not that they have to lie to be funny – this week a scummer arrested for drink driving tried to prove his good character by telling Shona "I’ve got a lovely girlfriend you know" to which she gloriously replied "I know – I arrested her too."

The only thing I would warn potential viewers about is the very end of the episode – skip it if you can is my advice. The last 30 seconds are when you find out what happened to those caught by police during the previous hour. It will make even the most Guardian-reading blood boil when you find out that risking lives through sheer reckless stupidity is worth a hundred pound fine or that being found in possession of a knife isn’t enough evidence to pursue a charge of possessing a knife. One guy last week was jailed and deported – a rare victory – but only because he was an illegal immigrant. Why can’t we get rid of our dangerous nutters instead of merely deporting other countries’ motorised loonies? Not to be all Daily Mail about it but people who deliberately do some of the things in this programme should not be let off as lightly as those who might accidentally stray once from the straight and narrow. But they are and that sucks.

Traffic Cops is good. I never thought I’d say it but it is. It won’t win prizes for imagination or innovation – and the narration is appallingly clichéd at times – but it is fun, it’s even a bit informative and I like the people in it. An unexpected treat before I have to switch off because I’m three weeks behind on Torchwood and it’s only up to week 4.

Now, what dodgy expression should I adopt if I want Shona to take down my particulars?