Painting Fakes

A few years ago my daughter and I developed an addiction to the American crime drama Bones.  The story centres around a group of forensic scientists, the most brilliant of whom is forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.  This team of impossibly good looking and brilliant people work in a shiny laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution and solve grisly murders rapidly on the basis of the tiniest scraps of evidence.  In one episode they solve a murder in which the only evidence is a single finger-bone of the victim. If we switched the TV on a bit early, we would get to see the end of the previous show, which for a long time was one of those police docu-dramas where the cameras follow a group of real police officers as they go about their daily business.  The contrast could not have been more stark.  Real police work turns out to be amazingly pedestrian.  The officers pull someone over for a faulty tail-light and find drugs in the glove-box.  A seri...