Dripping in squid ink, Tucci was like a butcher in a Quink abattoir

Standing amid the crates of live prawns and writhing squid at Venice’s fish market, Stanley tucci declared: ‘i want to eat all of it.’

Licking his lips as a stallholder showed him how to disembowel a cuttlefish, Stanley inhaled the pungent air with relish on his foodie travelogue Searching For Italy (BBC2).

He concentrated on some unlucky cuttlefish, learning how to chop them open and extract their balloon-like sac filled with black ink — used to flavour risotto.

By the time he was done, Stanley’s hands and arms were dripping with ink, his apron and face liberally spattered, too.

He looked like a butcher in a Quink abattoir.

next stop was Harry’s Bar for a martini, before a duck-hunting expedition to the wetlands.

Venetian nobles used to eat wild duck by the thousand, killed with a bow and arrow. Stanley favours the shotgun.

He lowered himself into a lakeside barrel and watched with approval as a marksman bagged a dozen or more mallards.

He’s willing to suffer any discomfort for the sake of a new culinary sensation — or, as he says it, ‘ queuelinnerry’. But like any true luvvie, he couldn’t do

this without complaining. ‘ i’m absolutely frozen,’ he shivered. ‘i

wish i’d brought one of those handwarming things.’

it’s all unintentionally hilarious, as is Stanley’s pretentious voiceover. ‘ the Venetians live between earth and water,’ he proclaimed, though what that means is anyone’s guess.

Best of all is his air of intense artistic appreciation as he savours the most unappetising delicacies: shavings of pork fat on bread for breakfast, or sea salt scraped off the bricks in an alleyway to add piquancy to a portion of fried calamari from a street vendor.

if you fancy that, here’s a low-budget alternative.

Why not get a portion of plaice from the High Street chippie and sprinkle it with salt from one of those yellow roadside bins the council use for gritting the streets?

Other reasons to avoid Venice included dried cod (imported from norway) whipped into a paste with sunflower oil, and a plate of ‘golden

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy

spaghetti’ — pasta soaked in fermented fish sauce and topped with gold leaf.

any chef who serves that to his diners is probably a serial killer.

the murders are mounting up in Karen Pirie (itV), the most satisfying new police serial for an age.

Lauren Lyle plays the newly promoted detective sergeant whose dedication to the job is so all- consuming that, when the investigation hits a hitch, she’s apt to leap out of her car and scream at the landscape.

if she seems young to be leading a murder inquiry, her sidekick is more junior still.

dC ‘Mint’ Murray (Chris Jenks) is so eager to please that Pirie refers to him as her puppy. Less imaginative writers than Val Mcdermid, who created the characters, might automatically invent a sexual frisson between the two.

But there’s no spark between Pirie and Mint, a basic fact cleverly conveyed when she gave him a friendly hug and he froze in horror, like a teenager being cuddled by a drunken auntie at Christmas.

the show’s only real flaw is the mumbling.

i needed subtitles on from the start.

You can tell me my tV needs replacing, or i’m going deaf — but every single one of Stanely tucci’s lofty effusions was quite clear.

HHHHI