| Second Verdict | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Troy Kennedy Martin Elwyn Jones |
| Starring | Stratford Johns Frank Windsor |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC1 |
| Release | 27 May – 1 July 1976 |
Second Verdict is a six-part BBC television series from 1976. It combines the genres of police procedural and docudrama, with dramatised documentaries in which classic criminal cases and unsolved crimes from history were re-appraised by fictional police officers. In Second Verdict, Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor reprised for a final time their double-act as Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt, hugely popular with TV audiences from the long-running series Z-Cars , Softly, Softly and Barlow at Large . Second Verdict built on the formula of their 1973 series Jack the Ripper in which dramatised documentary was drawn together with a discussion between the two police officers which formed the narrative. Second Verdict also allowed for some location filming and, when the case being re-appraised was within living memory, interviews with real witnesses.
The episodes were:
In 2015 BBC's Genome Blog described Second Verdict as "An odd and jarring mixture of drama and documentary" which "never really excited much interest". [1]
Although this was the last time Barlow and Watt would be seen together on British TV (and the last time Barlow would be seen at all), the Watt character would appear again later in the year in the final series of Softly, Softly: Task Force and then make one final appearance in the last episode of Z-Cars in September 1978.
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Z-Cars or Z Cars was a British television police procedural series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, near Liverpool. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
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Elwyn John Jones was a Welsh television writer and producer, who co-created the police drama series Z-Cars for BBC Television in 1962. Later, he devised Softly, Softly (1966–69), Softly, Softly: Taskforce (1969–76), Barlow at Large/Barlow, Jack the Ripper (1973) and Second Verdict (1976). A prolific television drama writer from the early 1960s until the late 1970s; from 1963 to 1966, he was Head of Drama (Series) at the BBC, under Head of Drama Group Sydney Newman, the first person to hold that post after Newman divided the drama group into Series, Serials and Plays divisions.
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