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. Dixon is a mature and sympathetic police constable, 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 emphasizes 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.
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.
Tatort is a German-language police procedural television series that has been running continuously since 1970 with some 30 feature-length episodes per year, which makes it the longest-running German TV drama. Developed by the German public-service broadcasting organization ARD for their channel Das Erste, it is unique in its approach in that it is jointly produced by all of the organization's regional members as well as its partnering Austrian and Swiss national public-service broadcasters, whereby every regional station contributes several episodes to a common pool.
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, writer and producer. He was the co-writer and director of the children's film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). He has been called "a filmmaker whose output was consistently interesting and entertaining, and deserved more critical attention than it has received."
Paul Marquess is a television producer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. His credits include Brookside, The Bill, Family Affairs, Hollyoaks, Crime Stories, Suspects and Hope Street. He also originated the idea for the series Footballers' Wives. He currently holds the post of managing director of Newman Street, a label of Fremantlemedia.
Miss Marple, titled Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the series, is a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie, starring Joan Hickson in the title role. It aired from 26 December 1984 to 27 December 1992 on BBC1. All twelve original Miss Marple novels by Christie were dramatised.
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.
Superintendent/Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard is a fictional policeman who appeared in 26 police procedural novels, 21 of which were written by John Creasey under the pseudonym J.J. Marric, and published between 1955 and 1976. Portraying Gideon as a master balancing the management of cases and the workings of law enforcement, it has been considered his "most famous police procedural series". After Creasey's death, the series was continued in five further novels by William Vivian Butler.
The Bill is a British police procedural television series, first broadcast on ITV from 16 August 1983 until 31 August 2010. The programme originated from a one-off drama, Woodentop, broadcast in August 1983.
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 season 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.
The Dark Stairway is a 1953 British short film. It was one of a series of shorts made for British cinemas as second features in the 1950s made by Anglo-Amalgamated at the Merton Park Studios as part of the Scotland Yard film series. They 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.
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.
