WHAT’S all this, asked the other half, Sweden’s finest detective back on the telly? Hadn’t he been written out and in any case, why is he up there on a high wire?

Imagine the disappointment, then, on learning it wasn’t Nordic noir’s Wallender, but an American of the same name. Wouldn’t it have been great though? Rolf Lassgård pursuing crooks 500 feet above the streets of Chicago armed with nothing more than a 12-metre balancing pole.

Beats a car chase any day.

It wasn’t the weekend’s only act of funambulism, though. David Cameron once again found himself walking a tightrope and this time Angela Merkel reckons he’s about to fall off.

The German Chancellor went further, saying she would sooner bid auf wiedersehen to Britain than allow it to impose a quota for European migrants.

Mrs Merkel has a point. Freedom of movement is a directive; a fundamental right embedded in the Treaty of Rome and failing to abide by it is essentially a breach of contract.

So how can the PM hope to avoid plummeting from his metaphorical skywalk onto the concrete pavement of political abyss? Almost certainly with difficulty. Already the outgoing European commission president has warned Mr Cameron that he is making a “historic mistake”.

But the trouble with our politicians is they seem blissfully unaware of the obligations this country accepted on joining the EU and instead make promises they simply aren’t in a position to keep.

Take Mr Cameron’s other recent stunt; the one where he flew into a fit of apoplexy over a ‘surprise’ bill for £1.7 billion. It was all stage-managed; a bid to show he can tough it out with Brussels.

Refusing to pay is even more nonsensical. Mr Cameron can no sooner ignore this bill, than he can limit the number of EU migrants wishing to settle in Britain.

We might not like it, but that’s the law; the price we pay to be part of the world’s largest single market.

It’s not just the Prime Minister who is living in cloud cuckoo land, though. Ed Miliband says he will call a referendum if any powers are transferred from Westminster to Brussels while he is Prime Minister.

But that’s just smoke and mirrors, because all such powers have long since gone under another fundamental of membership that says EU law takes precedence over national legislation. Indeed our courts have a duty to override any acts of parliament that conflict with it.

Who agreed to this? Our MPs of course, four decades ago when we joined. As Lord Bridge once put it: “Whatever limitation of its sovereignty Parliament accepted when it enacted the European Communities Act 1972 was entirely voluntary.”

So where does that leave us? At least in a quandary, possibly an impasse. David Cameron is under pressure to tackle EU immigration, while Angela Merkel has made it clear that freedom of movement is ‘not negotiable’.

But why not? We are member states, not occupied states and the most important EU principle has to be democracy. That means politicians sitting down together, talking over difficult things and finding solutions.

Such as to the freedom of movement issue. It was a simple principle in 1957 when the community had just six members. Now there are 28 and Europe is a very different place.

Mr Cameron is right to point this out, but, as Kurt Wallender might advise, walking such a precarious tightrope is not the way to do it – För helvete.