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.
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.
Frederick George Abberline was a British chief inspector for the London Metropolitan Police. He is best known for being a prominent police figure in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper serial killer murders of 1888.
Alan Edgar Stratford Johns, known as Stratford Johns, was a British stage, film and television actor who is best remembered for playing the role as senior CID officer Charlie Barlow a character he originated in the early years of the long-running BBC police series Z-Cars, and then continued to play in several spin-off series in the 1960s and 1970s.
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.
James Ellis was a Northern Irish actor and theatre director, with a career stretching over sixty years.
Frank Windsor Higgins, known professionally as Frank Windsor, was an English actor, primarily known for his roles on television, especially policeman John Watt in Z-Cars and its spin-offs.
John Woodvine is an English actor who has appeared in more than 70 theatre productions, as well as a similar number of television and film roles.
Gay Hamilton is a British actress, most notable for her roles in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Ridley Scott's The Duellists.
Leonard Jack Lewis was a British producer and director. He was most active in television. He was the Executive/Series Producer for BBC's EastEnders during the early 1990s, though he had success with many other television programmes for both the BBC and ITV. It has been said that Lewis believed in "the principles of public service broadcasting" and he has been described as a "gifted television producer with hidden directorial talents". After over 40 years working in the television industry, Lewis retired in 1995. He died in December 2005, aged 78.
Barlow at Large, later Barlow, is a British police procedural television programme broadcast in the 1970s, starring Stratford Johns in the title role.
Jack the Ripper is a six-part BBC police procedural made in 1973, in which the case of the Jack the Ripper murders is reopened and analysed by Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt. These characters were hugely popular with UK TV viewers at the time from their appearances on the long-running police series Z-Cars and its sequels Softly, Softly and Barlow at Large. The programme was presented partly as a discussion between the two principals in the present day, interspersed with dramatised-documentary scenes set in the 19th century. The series discusses suspects and conspiracies, but concludes there is insufficient evidence to determine who was Jack the Ripper. The experiment was seen to be a success, and the formula was repeated in 1976 with Second Verdict, in which Barlow and Watt cast their gaze over miscarriages of justice and unsolved mysteries from the past.
Softly, Softly: Task Force is a police procedural series which ran on BBC 1 from 1969 to 1976. It was a revamp of Softly, Softly, itself a spin-off from Z-Cars. The change was made partly to coincide with the coming of colour broadcasting to the BBC's main channel BBC1. The programme was due to be called simply Task Force, but reluctant to sacrifice a much-loved brand the BBC compromised this so it became Softly, Softly: Task Force.
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.
Frank Dudley Foster was an English actor who regularly appeared in television roles.
Get Lost! is a British television drama serial made by Yorkshire Television in 1981 for the ITV network. Written by Alan Plater, the plot concerns the disappearance of the husband of Leeds schoolteacher Judy Threadgold. Investigating the disappearance, with the aid of her colleague, woodwork teacher Neville Keaton, Judy learns of the existence of a secret organisation that helps disaffected people leave their unhappy lives behind.
This is a list of British television related events from 1973.
Ripper Street is a British mystery drama television series set in Whitechapel in the East End of London starring Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, and MyAnna Buring. It begins in 1889, six months after the infamous Jack the Ripper murders. The first episode was broadcast on 30 December 2012, during BBC One's Christmas schedule, and was first broadcast in the United States on BBC America on 19 January 2013. Ripper Street returned for a second eight-part series on 28 October 2013.
Detective Inspector Edmund John James Reid was the head of the CID in the Metropolitan Police's H Division at the time of the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper in 1888. He was also an early aeronaut.
