Episode 1 is brilliant - a well paced start in this ongoing mystery arc. I was expecting self-contained episodes, which we do get in later seasons, but this format worked well in the beginning as the 45 minute format is a bit tight for weekly combining crime and non-crime stories.
However this initial standard soon runs out of steam - the second half on this debut run has a very different feel and falls into the same trap as Brokenwood Mysteries et al - the plots become predictable with so many LGBT 'twists' that are not a surprises any more. Worse still, the focus becomes so fixed on sex-lives that there's nothing much new to figure out mystery-wise in the first season's finale. As much as I love Paul O'Grady , especially his doggy show, this inclusion really felt like a box-ticking, celeb appearance filler, and the time should have been put into something more relevant to the earlier style. Unfortunately, the Sainte Victoria youngsters were also uninspiring and later seasons are better without them, and the other departed characters - sometimes less is more.
Thankfully the first Christmas Special was absolutely fantastic, followed by a mixed bag of more one-off stories in the next seasons.