Policing the beat: British police and detective dramas

Jack Warner as Dixon of Dock Green

This week, I'm pleased to present to you John Berry, who we all know from Cult TV Blog. When John answered the call for guest essays and offered to give me a hand with the Wednesday pieces, I asked him if he'd be interested in writing about British police and detective series. I've always enjoyed British police and private detective (or "inquiry agent," if you prefer) series through the 1970s—the time period that we're both interested in. They have a combination of darkness, grit, and depth that make them quite fascinating to watch. He gladly accepted the challenge, and so, as an American might say, Here's John! 

by John Berry

MMitchell asked me to do a guest post on the history of British crime/detective/police TV shows, however, I'm afraid what I've done for him is far from being a systematic history. It is important to remember that thanks to the policy (of both the BBC and commercial TV stations) of wiping and reusing tapes, a huge proportion of British television before 1978 has disappeared forever. This means that the remaining TV shows are not always representative of what was actually made and broadcast, representing only what was arbitrarily selected to be archived. I've therefore decided to focus on shows that people can actually still watch and that I would recommend.

From the 1950s to the end of the 1970s TV police shows performed the function of reflecting the nature of UK policing and the public's attitude to the police. The attitude started off hugely deferential, with the famous Dixon on Dock Green (1955 to 1976), which depicts what we would now call community policing, with the titular Dixon more inclined to deal with minor misdemeanours with a clip round the ear than actually deal with serious crime. The depiction of policing was more realistic in Z-Cars (1962 to 1987) and the long run of shows in which the legendary Stratford Johns played Detective Inspector Barlow in one form or another (Softly Softly, Softly Softly Task Force, and Barlow, between the sixties and seventies) to a total of 345 episodes over multiple shows. Johns was so typecast that he even made guest appearances in other shows as his character and never really played anything else.

Patrick Mower is an actor who also had a rather typecast career in the seventies as a mouthy police officer who didn't get on with anyone else and was definitely what my mother would have called a sexy piece of work. He was in the interesting series Special Branch (1969 to 1970, 1973 to 1974) which is really two completely different shows about counterintelligence and counterterrorism. From the first block of episodes to the second, the show changed completely, becoming much less 'square' and more character-driven. It also featured the classic trope of two officers who really don't get on. Special Branch has excellent, imaginative scripts, and paved the way for the police TV of the late 1970s.

The events of the 1970s taught the public that the police were far from sea green incorruptible and this was of course reflected on TV. Perhaps the best known series along these lines was ◀ The Sweeney* (Cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad, 1975 to 1978) and its more violent competitor Target (1977 to 1978, which also starred Patrick Mower) and The Professionals (1977 to 1983, which picked up on the trope of detectives who didn't really get on). These shows depicted police as corrupt, venal, frankly incompetent, violent, and positively criminal.

*Starring John Thaw (later to portray Inspector Morse in the series of the same name) as Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his partner, Detective Sergeant George Carter.  

We do also have some much more kindly TV detectives. I would highlight Inspector Purbright (played by Anton Rodgers) in Murder Most English (1977), adapted from Colin Watson's detective novels set in the eccentric town of Flaxborough, as a definitely 'cosy' approach to policing. Rodgers also played David Gradley in Zodiac (1974), probably the man least suited to be a police detective ever. You don't hate him, though, because he's just rather drifted into it after Harrow. He teams up with an astrologer (played by Anouska Hempel) to solve crime in this series.

However there is a much richer vein on British TV depicting detectives or detection outside of the police. These shows frequently either set in the 'Swinging London' culture of the 1960s or grittily portray the life of desperation on a cold, wind-swept island off the continent.

Perhaps the detective least able to get on with other people, Sherlock Holmes, was portrayed in two 1960s BBC series, Sherlock Holmes (1965) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (1968), Holmes being played by Douglas Wilmer in the former and Peter Cushing in the latter. Peter Cushing is my favourite Sherlock Holmes just as he is my favourite Doctor Who and for the same reason: he comes across as wonderfully cerebral and I think gives an idea of what Conan Doyle's Holmes would actually have been like. Both series suffered from extensive junking but the remains of both series have been commercially released.

The show which possibly best epitomises the hard-bitten private detective who is well beyond being cynical, is Public Eye ► (1965 to 1975), starring Alfred Burke as Frank Marker. I often think that to be a private eye you either have to have had something terrible to happen to you, or else if it hasn't, a few years of doing the job would make sure you never wanted to trust another person again. Marker even manages to get sent to prison at one point, which ensures that, as well as seeing all the evil of the world, the police are also against him.* The show's scripts specialise in a lot of human motivations and relationships, with complex and strong exposition as part of Marker's investigation. Public Eye is known for its grittiness, but The View from Daniel Pike (1971 to 1973) makes Public Eye look like the Magic Roundabout. The reason for Pike's utter cynicism is never made clear, like it is with Marker, and this is very much the ethos of the show: it just states the hard-boiled facts without bothering too much with motivation or introspection. To go with this, Pike is frank, verging on rude with people, and yet this isn't done in a gratuitous way; it goes with the show, and having him insult his customers just seems to fit the situation. This show has not been commercially released but is online.

*Mitchell previously wrote about Public Eye here.

There is, of course, a long tradition of policemen who leave, retire or are kicked out, for whatever reason, becoming private eyes. Of those depicted on UK television I would draw your attention to Mr Rose (1967 to 1968), who is actually retired but can't stop investigating things. Bulman (1985 to 1987) is about a policeman who has also retired but keeps on. I prefer Bulman in many ways to Strangers (1978 to 1982), the show which actually depicted Bulman as a police officer, because I feel a greater sympathy for him being out of it, but still having his somewhat problematic relationship with his former employers.

There are some lesser-known series about private detectives that I think are well worth seeking out. One is ◀ The Big M (1967) about a private detective, Treherne, who begins investigating the absolute den of iniquity which is the seaside town where he lives, after the owner of the local strip club walks into his office and promptly dies. If you try The Big M, please watch at least a few episodes, because it introduces so much stuff, it takes a few episodes for it to get into its stride. And the other I like recommending to people, which nobody has ever heard of, is The Rose Medallion (1981) about an inquiry agent (private detective) called Harry who is a complete failure with women and looks after his cousin. His cousin manages to dig up a skeleton, and the rest of the mini-series is about the identity of the skeleton. Unfortunately, The Rose Medallion suffers because some misinformation about it has got loose online, and of course, people tend to copy it from each other. Possibly more people have heard of Hazell (1978 to 1979), an excellent pastiche of film-noir detectives such as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, but it's a great show if you haven't. And of course, everyone has heard of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969 to 1970), the show in which one of the detectives has the advantage of being dead. This is also the only TV show I know of where I like its remake and reimagining of 2000 just as much as the original.

Finally, I have to make an honorific mention of a series that isn't currently available but does periodically find its way online before the copyright holder gets it taken down again (it is just plain contrary to enforce copyright for a sixty-year-old TV show while also not actually making it available). This show is an anthology show called Detective ► (1964 to 1969). Because it is just called Detective, it is, of course, difficult to find when it does turn up, and also episodes tend to get uploaded by the title of the individual episode, so it's honestly like hen's teeth. Being an anthology series, of course also the episodes are variable and won't be to everyone's taste, but they are quality adaptations of a wide variety of different detective stories by a broad range of authors and are great viewing.

In conclusion, there is a great history of police and detective shows on British television, it's just that Mitchell asked the wrong person to write a sensible history of the genre. TV

Mitchell here, and I very much doubt I asked the wrong person, John! A terrific look at the genre, and certainly some very interesting programs to check out if you've got a region-free DVD player or have a hankering to go surfing on YouTube.

Thanks again to John, and a reminder that if you'd like to see your name in lights—or, at least, on the splash page of It's About TV, leave a comment, send me a message via the contact form, message me on X or Facebook, or, if you're one of the lucky ones with my email address, reach me there!  

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