Scotland Yard is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had its main public entrance on the Westminster street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became the public entrance, and over time "Scotland Yard" came to be used not only as the common name of the headquarters building, but also as a metonym for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) itself and police officers, especially detectives, who serve in it. The New York Times wrote in 1964 that, just as Wall Street gave its name to New York's financial district, Scotland Yard became the name for police activity in London.
The year 1954 in television involved some significant events. Below is a list of television-related events in 1954.
Dixon of Dock Green is a BBC police procedural television series about daily life at a fictional London police station, with the emphasis on petty crime, successfully controlled through common sense and human understanding. It ran from 1955 to 1976. The central character, George Dixon, first appeared in the film The Blue Lamp (1950). Dixon is a mature and sympathetic police constable, who was played by Jack Warner in all of the 432 episodes.
The police procedural, police show, or police crime drama is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasises the investigative procedure of police officers, police detectives, or law enforcement agencies as the protagonists, as contrasted with other genres that focus on non-police investigators such as private investigators (PIs).
Francis Henry Durbridge was an English dramatist and author, best known for the creation of the character Paul Temple, the gentlemanly detective who appeared in 16 BBC multi-part radio serials from 1938 onward.
Jericho is a British period crime drama series, first broadcast as a series of four episodes on ITV from 16 October 2005. The series was written and created by Stewart Harcourt, and starred Robert Lindsay as Detective Inspector Michael Jericho, a Scotland Yard detective who is loved by the public but embarrassed by his status as a hero. Because of his fame, a TV series, based on his career, is in development, paralleling the real-life TV series Fabian of the Yard which fictionalized the career of Scotland Yard detective Robert Fabian. The series is set in London in 1958. The series was seen as an attempt to exploit ITV's success in period crime drama, best exemplified by Foyle's War, and to rival the BBC's staple dramas such as Waking the Dead.
Kenneth Graham Hughes was an English film director and screenwriter. He worked on over 30 feature films between 1952 and 1981, including the 1968 musical fantasy film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name. His other notable works included The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), Of Human Bondage (1964), Casino Royale (1967), and Cromwell (1970). He was an Emmy Award winner and a three-time BAFTA Award nominee.
Sir Bruce Lovat Seton, 11th Baronet was a British actor and soldier. He is best remembered for his eponymous lead role in Fabian of the Yard.
Series 23 of British television drama The Bill was broadcast from 3 January until 28 December 2007. The series consisted of 92 episodes. On 2 April 2014, the complete series was released on DVD in Australia as a Region 0, playable anywhere in the world. Several episodes were aired out of production order, such as the conclusion of the Zain Nadir plot, and so, to avoid confusion, some episodes were renumbered. However, the DVD release carries the episodes in broadcast order, rather than production order, meaning that the DVD synopsis printed on the sleeve is heavily incorrect. The DVD synopsis also removes all titles, and continues to tally the episodes by number. The DVD release does not contain episodes 540–542, "Moving Target" Parts 1–3, owing to licensing rights for these episodes not being available.
Charles Joel Saunders was an English film director and screenwriter who began in the industry as a film editor, and who also contributed to television. He was the brother of the theatrical producer Sir Peter Saunders.
Colonel March of Scotland Yard is a British television series consisting of a single series of 26 episodes first broadcast in the United States from December 1954 to Spring of 1955. The series premiered on British television on 24 September 1955 on the newly opened ITV London station for the weekends Associated Television. It is based on author John Dickson Carr's fictional detective Colonel March from his book The Department of Queer Complaints (1940). Carr was a mystery author who specialised in locked-room whodunnits and other 'impossible' crimes: murder mysteries that seemed to defy possibility. The stories of the television series followed in the same vein with March solving cases that baffle Scotland Yard and the British police. The department itself is sometimes referred to as "D3". Boris Karloff starred as Colonel March.
Whitechapel is a British police procedural, produced by Carnival Films and distributed by BBC Worldwide, in which detectives in London's Whitechapel district deal with murders which replicated historical crimes. The first series was broadcast in the UK on 2 February 2009 and depicted the search for a modern copycat killer replicating the murders of Jack the Ripper.
This is a list of British television related events from 1955.
Scotland Yard is a series of 39 half-hour episodes produced by Anglo-Amalgamated. Produced between 1953 and 1961, they are short films, originally made to support the main feature in a cinema double-bill. Each film focuses on a true crime case with names changed, and feature an introduction by the crime writer Edgar Lustgarten.
Colonel March Investigates is a 1953 British film directed by Cy Endfield. The film comprises the three pilot episodes of the TV series Colonel March of Scotland Yard that were filmed in 1952, starring Boris Karloff. These episodes were "Hot Money", "Death in the Dressing Room" and "The New Invisible Man".
The Dark Stairway is a 1954 British short film directed and written by Ken Hughes and starring Russell Napier and Vincent Ball. It was one of the Scotland Yard series of second feature shorts made in the 1950s for British cinemas by Anglo-Amalgamated at the Merton Park Studios. The films in the series are narrated by crime writer Edgar Lustgarten, and were subsequently broadcast as television episodes.
Edward J. Danziger (1909–1999) and Harry Lee Danziger (1913–2005) were American-born brothers who produced many British films and TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s.
Robert Honey Fabian was an English police officer, who rose to the rank of Detective Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police.
Hugh Vincent Moxey, was a British film and television actor. Moxey spanned his career for 40 years, where he was best remembered in supporting roles in 1950s British war films, including classics such as The Dam Busters and Sink the Bismarck!.
Frank Forsyth, sometimes credited as Frank Forsythe, was an English actor, active from the 1930s. He was born on 19 December 1905 in London, England. He appeared in several TV programmes, including Department S (1969), The Adventures of Black Beauty (1972) and Journey to the Unknown (1968), as well as numerous films. His film appearances include eight of the Carry On films. He died on 2 May 1984 in Poole, England.
