There's a scene in I'm Alan Partridge in which our hero is desperately pitching a new show to Tony Hayers, the head of BBC television, and starts reciting a list. "Shoestring. Taggart. Spender. Bergerac. Morse. What does that say to you about regional detective series?" Hayers, unconvinced, replies, "There's too many of them?" Alan, undaunted, counters, "Another way of looking at it is, 'People like them; let's make some more of them'."