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Professor T (ITV1)

Rating: Four stars out of five

Paging Dr Freud! The neurotic detective show with a raging 'mother complex' is back, and it's more messed up than ever.

Professor T, starring Ben Miller as the highly strung sleuth Jasper Tempest, has worse mummy issues than Tutankhamun.

Never mind unravelling the murders and kidnappings – there's enough emotional puzzles to fill a psychology library.

Nearly every male we meet is terrified of women. And it has to be said that the women are fairly formidable.

Not content with having Frances de la Tour as Jasper's overbearing mother, Juliet Stevenson as his bossy therapist and Sarah Woodward as his forthright secretary Ingrid, the writers have added Zoe Wanamaker as his girlishly boisterous Aunt Zelda.

The first time we met Zelda, Jasper mistook her for an intruder until she emerged from the bathroom, stuck her head round the door and announced: 'I'm in the absolute nuddy!'

Ben Miller stars as Professor Jasper Tempest while Zoa Wanamaker plays Zelda Radclyffe (left) and Juliet Stevenson takes the role of Dr Helena Goldberg (right)

Then she started comparing her own body to that of her sister, Jasper's dear mama: 'I could never get into Adelaide's clothes... much bigger t*ts.'

There's enough material there to keep a platoon of Freudians busy for a week.

Zelda pounced on the first man she met, the university dean (Douglas Reith), and insisted on booking a dinner date, even though he had the words 'confirmed bachelor' running through him like the lettering in a stick of rock.

When the dean didn't turn up at the restaurant, she began batting her eyelashes at the chap on the next table, with more success.

Jasper, grieving the death of his murdered protege Lisa, was ordered back to work as a police consultant by his shrink, Dr Helena Goldberg.

She is showing signs of taking a more than professional interest in him – and if she decides on romance, he won't get much say in the matter.

Even at the station, he cannot escape the influence of domineering women. Chief Inspector Maiya Goswami (Sunetra Sarker) treats him like a bright but socially backward schoolboy.

'I didn't think you could get any stranger,' she told him with a pitying gaze, 'and yet here we are.'

Back for a fourth series (series five is already airing in the US), his first case involved an anxious young man called JC.

Professor T, Christopher Stevens writes, is a neurotic detective show with a raging 'mother complex'

He'd booked a boat trip to scatter his mother's ashes at sea but instead his girlfriend had apparently disappeared overboard.

The Professor solved the mystery when he discovered that JC's late mother was a child psychologist who wrote the book on tough love and starved him of affection. When she died, he flipped and kidnapped his girlfriend, before locking her up and faking her suicide.

Something about living out a control fantasy, apparently.

The only woman who doesn't breathe fire and toast her menfolk for breakfast is DC Chloe (Rhian Blundell), so recently promoted to CID that she feels awkward in plain clothes.

She'll soon find her confidence when she realises all the chaps are terrified of her. It's a woman's world.