You’re nicked

Investigating British television police series

Ben Lamb

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781526125859
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526125873
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Modern British History

You're nicked is the first comprehensive study of television police series in the UK. It shows how British television's most popular genre has developed stylistically, politically and philosophically from 1955 to the present. Each chapter focuses on a particular decade, investigating how the most-watched series represent the inner workings of the police station, the civilian life of criminals and the private lives of police officers. This new methodological approach unearths the complex ideology underpinning each series and discerns the key insights the genre can provide into the breakdown of the post-war settlement. A must-have for scholars and students of British history, television, sociology and criminology, the book will also be of interest to crime-drama enthusiasts worldwide.

1The 1950s and 1960s: a genre comes into its own

We would concentrate on smaller everyday type of crime … we set out to show a part of police work and I think we were right to stick to an approach which, within its self-imposed limits, is the true one.

Dixon of Dock Green creator Ted Willis (Willis 1964)

Cops were incidental – they were the means of finding out about people’s lives.

Z Cars producer John McGrath (quoted in Laing (1991): 127)

My study begins with an analysis of Z Cars (BBC, 1962–1978). I unearth the circumstances that led to Z Cars’ commissioning and its transformative production practices. I then examine how the programme’s resultant visual discourse upholds a humanitarian approach to policing in spite of Newtown station’s institutional obstacles. Lastly, I consider how this benevolent view of police work is complicated by the way characters who fall outside welfare-state provision in relation to ‘deviant subculture’ criminology are addressed by representations of working-class men’s private lives. The chapter explores how Z Cars’ mobile camerawork, compared to Dixon of Dock Green’s (BBC, 1955–1976) conservative visuals and ideology, enabled the programme to uncover the emerging cracks in the postwar consensus. Although, given the clear dichotomy presented between public and private spaces, I argue that establishing the British police series as a permanent fixture of the television schedule was underscored by a new candid form of social realism devoted to the stresses of working-class men’s experiences.

A genre is born

The unflinching mode of social realism implemented by Z Cars was, in part, a response to the arrival of commercial television. Following the UK Government’s 1954 Television Act an Independent Television Authority (ITA) awarded licences to production companies throughout the UK. Each company, or franchise, was tasked with providing programming for the region in which it was based. Launching the Independent Television (ITV) channel shook the BBC to its very core, as its comfortable twenty-year monopoly was now over. Whilst ITV was still obliged by the same public-service broadcasting legalities, it managed to revolutionise the production and reception of drama productions. The Manchester-based Associated British Corporation (ABC) produced the hugely successful Armchair Theatre (ITV, 1956–1974), which broadcast weekly plays written especially for television. These plays injected a new type of realism into television drama as they were anchored in a distinctly northern working-class experience. Broadcasting now had a ‘new sensitivity towards popular culture in its class, regional, and generational variety’ (Corner 1991: 9). Such television overshadowed the BBC’s drama output and ensured ITV ‘considerably surpassed the BBC’s audience share’ by 1960 (Cooke 2015a: 33). In comparison, the BBC’s first head of drama, Michael Barry, heavily relied on theatre material and the classics. The BBC was still governed by the belief of its first director general, John Reith (1927–1938), that as a public-service broadcaster its drama must not be for entertainment purposes alone. Drama should inform, educate, and then entertain because ‘he who prides himself on giving what he thinks the public want is often creating a fictitious demand for lower standards’ (Reith 1925: 3). Such a disposition would oversee BBC drama until Barry’s departure in 1961.

Whilst viewers were migrating to ITV in large numbers, one police series was standing firm. Dixon of Dock Green represented one of the BBC’s few drama successes of the late 1950s and early 1960s, attracting audiences of ‘10 million by the middle of 1957’ (Cooke 2015a: 52). By the first quarter of 1961 Dixon was the second most popular programme of the BBC’s schedule with a viewing average of 13.85 million viewers (Sydney-Smith 2002: 104). The format of the programme, as devised by scriptwriter Ted Willis, fitted perfectly with the BBC’s Reithian public-service ethos. Dixon was not drama for entertainment’s sake. Based on the experiences of its police consultants, Dixon informed the British public of its police force’s working practices. London-based police constable George Dixon (Jack Warner) was a character who initially appeared in Ealing Studio’s cinematic release The Blue Lamp (1950), co-scripted by Willis. Like Reith, Dixon operates as a paternal guardian of public decency, directly instructing viewers at the start and end of each episode to take care of their own family, ‘in the interests of state and country’ (Sydney-Smith 2002: 109). Dixon embodies what is deemed to be ‘a conservative attitude’, as criminality is viewed as a problem ‘endemic to all classes’ rather than a product of society’s failings (Sydney-Smith 2002: 114). In ‘The rotten apple’ (11 August 1956), the corrupt policeman Tom Carr (Paul Eddington) thieves ‘just for the hell of it’. This ideological framework portrays criminals as ‘pathologically evil’ because they are solely responsible for having chosen to be ‘apart from, rather than a part of, society’ (Sydney-Smith 2002: 114). Following the arrest Dixon comforts viewers by concluding that Carr ‘was the only bad copper I ever met’.

Such a simplistic representation of crime and comforting view of the law are informed by a conservative approach towards character, given the production practices that dictated Dixon’s broadcast. A minimally designed mise-en-scène was largely due to the infrastructure of the BBC. Dixon was produced by the BBC Light Entertainment Department and so shared personnel with other programmes, including the sitcom Handcock’s Half Hour (BBC, 1956–1960) and various children’s programming. In these light-entertainment productions set designs were subservient to spoken dialogue. This is because ‘the obsessive circularity of the dominant narrative model, in which the situation that gives each series its peculiar identity must be returned to unaltered’ (Bignell and Lacey 2005b: 13). This approach towards character and situation, leaving actors somewhat displaced from their surrounding mise-en-scène, was highly different from the practices employed by ITV. In contrast, ABC set designer, Voytek, was given licence to create ‘a dramatic frame which by its influence on the actors and the audience will project the inner life of the play’ (quoted in Taylor 1962: 27). Set designers on Dixon had no such impact. Designer Richard Wilmot’s biggest concern was that ‘the stock sets are beginning to look decidedly shabby after nine episodes’, and so he requested ‘extra man hours’ to refurbish them (Moodie 1957: n.p.). Operating as a functional backdrop meant the sets had no influence on Dixon’s characters.

Furthermore, camerawork in Dixon is mostly observant. The camera is not an inherent part of the performance and it does not undercut the spoken word. Again, whilst this visual discourse fits with Willis’s conservative ideology, it can also be attributed to the compromises producer/director Douglas Moodie had to make with BBC management. Moodie had to submit a ‘special request’ to use a fourth camera, and it was not until 1958 that he was given permission to use four cameras on a regular basis (Sampson 1958: n.p.). Even then only one camera was motorised, meaning the other three were pedestal-mounted and immobile. Also, the use of a fourth camera was only agreed under the condition it was used ‘in the event of a breakdown of one camera’, as Dixon would continue to be shot by ‘three cameras’ (Sampson 1958). Meanwhile, ITV’s Armchair Theatre was using six mobile cameras per production. According to producer Leonard White, pedestal cameras at ABC were used ‘as travelling hand-held units, covering endless shot-cards, pushing and pulling to the next position, selecting the lens from four alternatives on the turret while being encouraged by the director … to “get in closer”’ (White 2003: 57). Dixon’s static camerawork possesses no such visual expression in presenting characters and situations.

The results of these compromises made during Dixon’s production are apparent in the opening to ‘Father in law’ (1 September 1956). Dixon stands in his front room talking to a host of characters the day before his daughter’s wedding. The characters are positioned in ‘frontal’ compositions where they stand together shoulder to shoulder as they look out to the camera, unable to interact with the set behind them (Cooke 2005: 84). Framing the actors in two mid-shots throughout the scene leaves characters unnaturally grouped together, unable to move around freely as they would in real life. Then an exchange of close-ups ensues between Dixon and each character as he talks to them one at a time in preparation for the wedding. The focus here is on the spoken word, as the surrounding set design is largely out of view. There is no visual discourse to undermine or complicate the spoken dialogue as was being achieved at ITV. The head of drama at ABC, Sydney Newman, believed ‘I love good talk in plays, but … individuals should be communicated to the audience by what they are doing and how they are reacting. Story, character delineation, all these things: you demonstrate them’ (Newman 1962: 4). In Dixon, attitude, story, character, and delineation are spoken in a literal manner.

Characters function as archetypes in Dixon, partially because the actors all occupy the foreground and cannot make use of the set’s depth or disturb the placement of objects. Dixon is a father in a literal and symbolic sense as communicated throughout this scene. Usually placed centrally within each shot, he is father to his daughter Mary (Jeanette Hutchinson), father to his son-in-law Andy Crawford (Peter Byrne); he fathers the younger policemen who ask for advice and he is also father to the nation watching at home, as episodes are guided by his paternal recollection and perspective of events. Therefore Dixon creates a ‘patriarchal ideology’ where the feminine is fixed to ‘the heart of the domestic sphere’ (Sydney-Smith 2002: 110). Dixon’s conservative ideology manifests as a combined result of Willis’s deliberate intention only to ‘show a part of police work’ and the strict Reithian principles under which BBC drama was operating (Willis 1964: 7). This ideological outlook is matched by an equally conservative and literal visual aesthetic that was a consequence of the compromises reached between producer/director Douglas Moodie and the BBC’s Light Entertainment Department’s working practices, resources, and management.

Nevertheless, this reassuring patriarchal archetype struck a chord with audiences. In 1957, after Dixon’s 100th episode, a Radio Times feature stated that ‘the police service could trace an increase in recruitment due to the series’, which should therefore be ‘strongly applauded’ (Sydney-Smith 2002: 108). To this day George Dixon remains an indefatigable figure firmly ingrained within national consciousness. Whenever the working practices of the police force are scrutinised often the press refers to Dixon as the wholesome, community-oriented bobby on the beat as the standard to which all police officers should aspire.¹

Z Cars enters production

Dixon of Dock Green alone could not save the BBC from its mass exodus of viewers. In 1960 Hugh Carleton Greene took over as director general, stating that he would ‘throw open the windows and let in a breath of fresh air’ (Sydney-Smith 2002: 157). Under Greene’s premiership Michael Barry resigned as head of drama in 1961 and ABC’s head of drama Sydney Newman would replace him in 1963. Essentially the BBC’s new strategy was to beat ITV at its own game. It would now produce ‘popular programmes of sufficient quality’ in forms of ‘continuing drama that could build up a regular and committed following’ (Laing 1991: 126). Norman Rutherford was appointed the BBC’s acting head of drama, and Elwyn Jones, who had previously been in charge of documentary drama, was appointed as his assistant. During this transitionary period scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin pitched his idea to Jones about a series that would follow a Lancashire-based constabulary and its use of patrol cars. Given an increasing appetite at the BBC to feature more drama in the northern regions, Jones commissioned Z Cars and teamed up Kennedy Martin with established documentarian Robert Barr.² According to Barr, Z Cars’ quality ‘comes from a constant war between me who wants it to be documentary and Troy, who wants to write fiction’ (quoted in Lewis 1962: 310). Z Cars was then produced by the BBC’s Documentary Department, and so inaugurated a documentary approach to character. Producer John McGrath spent a week with the actors ‘discussing the complete social background of every character … we filled it all in, in great detail. Not one of these blokes would say a line without knowing why he was saying it’ (quoted in Lewis 1962: 309). This practice could not have been any further from ITV’s Armchair Theatre, where it was uncommon for actors to have a say, even if, as Anthony Quinn claims, a director’s understanding was ‘totally at odds’ with an actor’s conception of their own role (quoted in Taylor 1962: 33). Z Cars proved immediately successful. Pulling in audiences of 14 million per episode by its eighth week of transmission it would receive peak audiences of 16.65 million: 3 million more viewers than Dixon (Laing 1991: 129–135).

Social realism

Such treatment of character can now be recognised as social-realist: a form of drama that often requires actors to be attuned to how ‘environmental factors’ impact ‘on the development of character’ to provide ‘gritty character studies of the underbelly of urban life’ (Hallam and Marshment 2000: 184). However, in 1962 televisual social realism that ‘reveals the situation of the working class at the level of its culture and everyday practices’ had a rather nostalgic flavour (Lacey 2007: 5). Social-realist discourse in the early 1960s was wary of commercialism and its perceived ability to eradicate traditional cultures. This was first stated in Richard Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy (2009 [1957]) and was repeated by the 1960 Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, of which Hoggart was a member. The Pilkington Report criticised ITV for debasing culture, believing there was a need for ‘a greater proportion of the more thoughtful and challenging types of programme’ (Pilkington Committee 1962: 11). The first types of series-drama arising from this climate included the melodramatic series, or ‘glossies’, Emergency Ward 10 (ITV, 1957–1967), Coronation Street (ITV, 1960–), Compact (BBC, 1962–1965), and Dr Finlay’s Casebook (BBC, 1962–1971). Coronation Street shared a particular affinity with Hoggart’s writings, as the series nostalgically depicts a self-contained type of working-class community that was in reality amidst the process of disappearing. Z Cars instigated a shift from Dixon’s nostalgically Hoggartian depiction of working-class life to a society where a sense of community has been severely diminished. Now there were ‘no reassuring endings where decency and family life triumphed’ (McGrath 2005 [1976]: 71). Z Cars provided a new social realism revealing ‘a dry-eyed lament for life as it is messily lived in Britain in affluent 1962’ (Lewis 1962: 310).

This sobering sensibility made Z Cars the first police series to recognise that the police were becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack. In their attempts to combat physical harm the British Police developed new, more technologically developed tactics. The constable patrolling a beat was increasingly replaced by constables in cars responding to crime rather than just seeking to prevent it. Technology ‘fundamentally altered the role of the policeman’ (Hall et al. 1978: 46). The unit-beat policing system utilised patrol cars and personal radios, meaning a policeman was no longer seen as ‘the friendly helpful bobby, keeping the peace and thereby preventing crime’. He was no longer ‘knowledgeable about his community and sharing some of its values’. Instead ‘contact with the people he polices became minimal’ (Hall et al.: 46). The impact such changes had on the nature of police work, and the police’s relationship to the public, are explored in scenes that occur within Newtown station.

Newtown station

On average Z Cars devotes ten minutes of an episode to scenes that unfold in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• General editors’ preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: defining a genre
• 1 The 1950s and 1960s: a genre comes into its own
• 2 The 1970s: an action-fuelled filmic decade?
• 3 The 1980s: emergent feminist thought and resurgent video cameras
• 4 The 1990s: transitioning from film to digital
• 5 The 2000s: looking to the past
• 6 The 2010s: looking to pastures new
• Conclusion: good evening, all
• References
• Index