About
About A Cup of Crime
The case file on this site.
David O'Connell - editor of A Cup of Crime
A Cup of Crime is a one-person operation with strong opinions, built over forty years of British and Irish television. It is written and edited by me, David O'Connell — Irish, fifty years old, and in New York for the last twenty-five years. There is no editorial board behind the verdicts. When you see an opinion on this site, you know whose it is.
From The Sweeney to Morse, from Sherlock — Brett's or Cumberbatch's, take your pick — the theme tunes carry a set of memories with them. The earliest is Jeremy Brett's Holmes, at about the age of seven, and that is where the forty years begin. The span isn't a figure of speech.
Why it exists, and who it's for
IMDb and TMDb are both sites I have always enjoyed, and neither quite hit the mark for me when it came to highlighting the best of television. The best is not always the most critically acclaimed; sometimes it is simply the witty or the interesting one.
Mostly this is written for me, as a record of what four decades of watching adds up to. It is at its most useful to people who are already fans, to people looking for something new, and to people who have never come across the shows that sit on box sets but are no longer repeated on television — Between the Lines being the obvious example. Anyone who loves Morse and has never seen Endeavour has some good evenings ahead.
What gets a show in
The shows are my selection, the actors my favourites, and the episodes have almost all been watched. A show gets in if I find it entertaining, if the production values are good, and if it has clearly taken time to make rather than come off a factory line.
Midsomer Murders is the example I would give of the opposite: it changes its characters more often than it changes its storylines. Not that a programme has to be a favourite of mine for me to watch it — it doesn't.
How a page gets made
How a page comes together is less orderly than it looks. Most begin with something remembered — an actor turning up somewhere unexpected, a scene that stays with you — and then the digging starts. Michael Kitchen guesting in Morse sent me back to Foyle's War, and there is a great deal of that still to be done.
The resources out there are remarkable, and a good deal of the job is reaching for them: the information is widely dispersed, and in twenty-five years of I.T. work I have found people to be incredibly generous with what they know when you ask.
The rest is editorial. It is my vision and my taste, and while AI helps with some of the work, I am behind every page.
The ratings
The scores are aggregated from other sites rather than handed down by me. A ratings and comment system of our own is the thing I would like to add next, once visitors make that investment worthwhile — there are big plans here, if the audience exists.
Corrections, and what comes next
Accuracy is the aim, all one hundred per cent of it, but mistakes happen. Email david@acupofcrime.com with a correction and I will fix it quickly.
Votes and comments are what come next: your verdicts, and your memories of the shows and episodes — early in 2027, if the audience continues to expand.
The site isn't monetised. It might be nice one day, but it isn't what this is for. In the meantime, please continue to enjoy the site.
— David O'Connell, editor