SMALL SCREEN THEME TIME (Part 2 of 12)
It's time to draw the curtains, switch on the TV and consult the listings magazines to see what's on the box tonight. Of course, it being the early 1960s, we only have two channels, the telly takes time to warm up, the screen is barely 19 inches across and if you miss a show - that's it, you'll never be able to see it again. Despite there only being the two channels - BBC and your regional ITV offering - you needed a programme guide from each, The Radio Times and TV Times respectively. TV listings in the Radio Times helpfully had a small television icon at the top of each page in case readers confused them with the radio Home Service or Light Programme. The national press barely covered television, the best that could be expected being perfunctory listings buried in the corner of a typical broadsheet page.
This was the world of home entertainment in those far off days.
This is the second episode in my latest blog and this week, we start to take a proper look at the signature tunes, the theme songs of popular television dramas and how they've changed and developed across the past 50 years and more.
Last week's opening episode outlined the three main areas that I'd be reviewing - Drama, Comedy and Sport - and how theme tunes provided an instant recognition of the type of show that was about to be viewed. You can read that first episode here:
This week, I consider a major type of drama show: Police & Detective - from procedural to high adventure and all stops in between. Next week, it's the turn of Historical dramas and Westerns with future episodes covering Medical/Hospital, Spy/Agent, Contemporary and Science Fiction/Fantasy. As noted last time, the focus will be on British shows, although where overseas productions achieved success in the UK, I'll be sampling some of those themes as well.
Right then - the TV's crackled into life, the coal fire is nicely warm - and a cup of tea is close to hand: let's see what's on tonight.
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| Radio Times - 1953 - Wuthering Heights |
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| TV Times - 1970 - Callan |
DRAMA - POLICE & DETECTIVE - THE 1950s & 1960s
Police and detective dramas have been a staple diet of the small screen since the early 1950s. Whilst we see evidence of the police at work in our every day lives, there's nothing quite like a tautly-plotted police procedural with plenty of red herrings, intrigue and villains to be caught and banged up. There are two distinct strands - home-produced shows and those imported from the States and, in recent years, from Scandanavia. British shows - broadly - tended to be more studio-bound and less frenetic than those from across the Atlantic and this is reflected in the styles of theme tunes used. Although it's a sweeping generalisation, the home-grown product was gentler and probably more grounded in what we saw as everyday life when compared to the more cinematic approach of its American cousin. However, in the very early days of television's post-war revival, the first British police procedural Fabian Of The Yard emulated the tried and trusted formula of existing US shows such as Dragnet. It's opening credits suggested urgency and excitement - and indeed, they were packaged up and also shown in the USA under the name of Patrol Car. Both shows employed voice-overs and avoided too much exposition when it came to actual murder scenes and looking at them now, they do have a certain period charm.
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| BBC - 1954 to 1956 (Tommy Reilly) |
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| NBC - 1951 - 1959 (Miklos Rozsa) |
The BBC's next attempt at a police-based drama arrived in 1955, mid-way through the run of Fabian Of The Yard. It fits our notion of what a copper's life was like - certainly in a far-off rose-tinted view of the past, as opposed to the reality with which we're all (apparently) so familiar today. The show took its central character from a 1950 film, The Blue Lamp - which was a bit ironic since that character, PC George Dixon, was shot and killed by a young tearaway played by Dirk Bogarde. Nevertheless, writer Ted Willis knew what he wanted and the show he created - Dixon Of Dock Green - ran for over twenty years. It survived all manner of social changes, other upstart shows, the glossy US imports and rival programming from ITV - and only really came to an end when - let's be honest - actor Jack Warner was in his 80s and looking a little out of place compared to his fellow cast. The theme music, composed by Jeff Darnell, was a folksy instrumental which was later released as a single under the title An Ordinary Copper. The harmonica playing may have been changed to a more modern orchestral driven version for the final few seasons, but it was still recognisably the original tune.
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PC George Dixon
Dixon Of Dock Green
(BBC - 1955 - 1976) |
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No Hiding Place
(Associated/Rediffusion
1959 - 1967) |
Meanwhile, over on the ITV network - which in those days was a collection of individual regional broadcasting companies such as Granada and ATV - a new show was developed by London contractor Associated/Rediffusion. Their show - No Hiding Place - first aired in 1959 as a successor to two earlier series, Murder Bag and Crime Sheet. Both had featured as principal character Raymond Francis as Detective Superintendent Lockhart who would be seen visiting crime locations and heading up the subsequent investigations. It ran for over 200 shows through to 1967 and was a more upbeat production compared to its BBC rival.
In the last episode, we covered the innovative approach of the BBC's landmark show Z-Cars, launched in 1962 and the first such police drama to to show the grit and the grime of police-work and crime detection. The theme tune is instantly recognisable and, such was it success as a format, that the show spawned three spin-off series over the years - Softly Softly, Task Force and Barlow At Large. Compared to Dixon |Of Dock Green, Z-Cars was a breath of fresh air and its no nonsense characters seemed to be more like what it really was to be a copper at the dawn of the 1960s. That decade brought major change to the social fabric in the UK and - of course - that had to be reflected in drama shows on TV. The first series to have a decent amount of money spent on it - which permitted much location filming and a greater sense of reality - was Gideon's Way. Based on the series of novels by John Creasey, it was an ITC production - a company we'll come across more frequently in a later episode. John Gregson played Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard and he brought a sense of style to the series which, at times, pushed the boundaries as to what could be shown on TV in the two years it ran in 1964 and 1965. The theme music - composed by Edwin Astley - was a little derivative (I can detect elements of Z Cars and other shows in it, but nonetheless, it was distinctive and marked the show out ad being a detective drama series from the first few bars.
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| Gideon's Way (ITC - 1964 - 1965) |
The 1960s also saw an increasing number of US imports to the TV schedules and it was clear that these had glossier production values and much more money lavished on them. Shows such as Burke's Law with Gene Barry showed what was possible: he played (believe it or not) the millionaire captain of a Los Angeles homicide division who used a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce to get taken to the the latest crime-scene. The show's original run was from 1963-1966. The theme music was bold and brash, plenty of brass and percussion - and clearly very different from Dixon Of Dock Green of Z Cars.
The year after Burke's Law concluded its original run, 1967, a new and ground-breaking show was produced by NBC. This was Ironside: it starred Raymond Burr as the eponymous police chief who had been shot and paralysed from the waist-down, thus needing to use a wheelchair. He was a tough, non-nonsense sort of guy and had a loyal team with him - and best of all was the theme music, written by none other than Quincy Jones. The show ran for eight seasons through to 1975 and is still remembered fondly to this day. The them - barely 45 seconds long - is both exciting and enticing: you really do want to watch this show and again, there was nothing quite like it from British production companies.
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| Burke's Law (CBS - 1963 - 1966) |
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| Ironside (NBC - 1967- 1975) |
DRAMA - POLICE & DETECTIVE: THE 1970s
The 1970s is perhaps best remembered as the Decade of The Detective.
Whether the shows were British or American, the TV schedules were full of them - and this was in addition to the ongoing older programmes such as Dixon and Z Cars that were still soldiering along. The newer shows tended to be darker and more willing to expose the viewers to less comfortable examples of criminality: drug-dealing, sex-trafficking and violent robbery for example. It's fair to say that shows such as Special Branch and The Sweeney - both produced by Thames TV subsidiary Euston Films - wiped the floor with older style police procedurals. They had the production values of the better ITC shows, they were filmed on 35m film-stock and made great use of location filming. Special Branch opened for business in 1969 as a pretty standard-fare Thames Television detective show; the first season was mainly studio bound, shot on videotape and only survives today in black and white. In 1973, it was overhauled by Euston Films - and really took off as a genuinely exciting - if violent - series starring George Sewell and Patrick Mower.
It was its successor - The Sweeney - though that really brought the world of crime to life on our 1970s TV screens, screens that were increasingly colour and able to show programmes off in a crisper, brighter way. It launched in 1975 and ran for four seasons and made almost folk heroes of its no nonsense detectives Regan and Carter, played by John Thaw and Dennis Waterman respectively. Car chases, fights, battles, the shadowy underworld - and occasional humour: it was a show of its time, of its age - but in it opening and closing themes, had two supreme pieces of music.
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Special Branch
Thames TV/Euston Films
(1969-1975) |
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The Sweeney
Thames TV/Euston Films
(1975-1978) |
Meanwhile, the American 70s invasion cranked up a gear or two. In 1971, there was the first season of Cannon, a CBS Crime drama featuring William Conrad as a former LA Cop turned crime fighting private detective. A continuing series which got its first UK airing in the early 70s was Columbo, a kind of reverse-whodunnit detective series starring Peter Falk as the shabbily dressed maverick detective Lt Columbo. This was a little different as each story was almost movie-length and started with the crime - and who committed it: the audience thus knew who, but not why from the outset - and it was down to the idiosyncratic methods of Columbo to nail them, usually by asking for "just one more thing". 1970 also saw the launch of McCloud, a TV version of the 1968 Clint Eastwood movie Coogan's Bluff - the cowboy cop out of place in the big city. Dennis Weaver played McCloud and as with Columbo, the shows were feature length and often (in the UK) played week-in-week-out with said show. In the USA, they were part of the long-running strand Mystery Theatre which had its own TV theme written by Henry Mancini.
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| Peter Falk as Columbo (NBC TV - 1968 - 1977) |
Perhaps the strongest and most memorable theme music belonged to a show set out in the middle of the Pacific - Hawaii 5-0. Starring Jack Lord as Detective Lt McGarrett, the show first aired in 1968 and ran through to 1980. There was plenty of crime and glamour across the islands, but it's the theme composed by Mort Stevens that everyone remembers. It was so well matched to the title credits and it made the show feel exciting and just a little bit different. When the series was remade in 2010 as a contemporary version of the original, the theme music was retained- although shortened slightly to fit modern-day show-making standards.
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| Hawaii 5-0 (CBS - 1968 - 1980 and 2010 - Current) |
It could be argued that these were shows born in the 60s, rather than the 70s which they physically inhabited. But for those who enjoy 70s American cop shows, there were plenty to choose from. Two in particular that really caught the public consciousness in the UK, both very different from each other, but both with distinctive signature themes and larger than life lead characters. First off the block in 1973 was Kojak, the eponymous Lt Kojak played by Telly Savalas, a "tough and tenacious rule-bending New York cop" who was often seen sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop. The other show hit the screens two years later in 1975 - this was Starsky & Hutch, two California-based detectives who drove a Ford Gran Torino and spent most of their time being chased or in chases. There was a degree of levity in the show and it became one of the first *buddy* cop shows where the relationship between the two was just as important as the plot-lines.
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| Kojak (CBS - 1973-1978) |
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| Starsky & Hutch (ABC - 1975-1979) |
DRAMA - POLICE & DETECTIVE: THE 1980s
Back in the UK, the 1980s looked as if they'd be lean years for home-grown police dramas.
Dixon had gone, so had Z-Cars and Softly, Softly: Task Force.
The BBC launched a new show called Juliet Bravo in 1980. Originally starring Stephanie Turner (and then her replacement, Anna Carteret) as a newly promoted female inspector taking over a northern country police station, it looked for all the world like a rural Z Cars. But, as it was produced and written by Ian Kennedy Martin who had also created The Sweeney, perhaps it would turn into something a little bit different. Whilst the scripts and plots were efficient and points were made about the role of women in the police service, it did seem too aimed at the Dixon and Z Cars audience. A much more interesting concept was another Ian Kennedy Martin creation. This was The Chinese Detective starring David Yip as, well, what the title says - only working in London and encountering all manner of suppressed racism from his colleagues. It only ran for two short series of six shows each in 1981 and 1982, but I much preferred it to the rural cosiness of Juliet Bravo.
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| Juliet Bravo (BBC - 1980 - 1985) |
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| The Chinese Detective (BBC 1981/2) |
An altogether different format for the BBC hit the screens in 1981, a series featuring the day-to-day lives of the members of Jersey's Bureau des Etrangers and their fight against crime in the Channel Islands. John Nettles played the lead role of Detective Sgt Bergerac - and also gave his name to the series itself. Bergerac was a big success and attracted a wide range of guests actors across the ten years that it was on air. In many ways with its exotic island location, run-ins with villains and millionaires, it was a home-grown set-up similar to Hawaii 5-0.
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| Bergerac (BBC - 1981-1991) |
Over at ITV, they too developed new shows for the 1980s, one of the first being a template perhaps for the BBC's Juliet Bravo in that the lead detective is female - taken as read today, but 30 or more years ago, there was drama to be had (sadly) in the nature of the role, even before the ability of the character to *detect* was proven. This show was The Gentle Touch starring Jill Gascoine as DI Maggie Forbes and she certainly made the part very much her own. Produced by London Weekend Television (LWT) the show was, for its time, lauded for its "frank depiction of relevant social issues...racism, sexism and mental health" and it became a huge success for LWT, running to four series and then a spin-off show C.A.T.S Eyes. When The Gentle Touch came to an end, LWT created a replacement series, although this was very different in tone and style. Dempsey & Makepeace was an "oddball pairing of two police detectives...an elegant British noblewoman and a streetwise New Yorker". They operated out of a special Metropolitan Police unit in London and it was perhaps less police procedural than odd couple, but it proved to be a hit with viewers and the stars, Glynnis Barber and Michael Brandon really made it their own with their on-screen chemistry - which later turned into marriage back in the real world.
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The Gentle Touch
(LWT - 1980 - 1984) |
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| Dempsey & Makepeace (LWT - 1985-1986) |
As might be expected, the theme tunes were very much of their 1980s era - synthesiser driven rather than orchestral - and certainly not as distinctive as (say) Z Cars was when that first hit our screens. One BBC show that tried something a little bit different - perhaps being slightly influence by Pink Floyd's hit single Another Brick In The Wall - was Rockliffe's Babies. It only ran for two seasons, but was set in a gritty, urban locale in London and starred Ian Hogg as a the eponymous Rockliffe whose job it as to train a squad of inexperienced police constables. The theme music incorporated children singing the lyrics against an urgent and contemporary beat: it was clearly a cop show, but there the theme suggested something a bit extra too. An altogether more urban and violent series was one made by Scottish Televison and broadcast one and off for over 25 years. This was Taggart, a series set in the Glasgow area and initially starring Mark McManus as the tough DCI Jim Taggart, a cop who had worked his way up through the ranks and liked to do things "his way". McManus sadly died in 1994 and although a new character was brought in to take his place, the show continued to be called Taggart right through to the end of its days in 2010 after some 109 episodes. Taggart's theme tune was a typical 1980s piece of signature music - but it had the added bonus of blues singer Maggie Bell on vocals: she certainly made it memorable and one to treasure.
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Ian Hogg as Sgt Rockliffe in
Rockcliffe's Babies (BBC 1987/8) |
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Taggart - Set in Glasgow and ran for 27 years
(STV 1983-2010) |
Another long-running and influential detective show was also born in 1980s. Although it came to an end in 2000 with the death of the title character, it has since spawned both a sequel and a prequel: the show is, of course, Inspector Morse, the creation of Colin Dexter who wrote a series of novels which led to the TV series. There were high production values on the show, each episode running pretty much as a feature-length film and boasting some characteristic music composed for it by Barrington Pheloung. Morse - as played by John Thaw - was a real-ale and classical-music loving Geordie cop based in the refined centre of Oxford academe. It's been a popular show around the world even though only 33 episodes were made. The spin-offs were Lewis (Morse's sergeant in the original series, now promoted) and Endeavour, a prequel featuring a young Morse in the 1960s as a Detective Constable just getting to grips with his arrival in the city of dreaming spires.
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Sgt Lewis & Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse (1987 - 2000) |
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| Endeavour starring Shaun Evans (2012 - Current) |
Whilst Taggart - and in its own way, Morse - were both long-running shows, they were almost polar opposites in terms or locale and style. Another show which ran for many years also adopted a different style: rather like Z Cars, it started out as an hourly drama series - and later became a twice-weekly half-hour show which at times seemed more like a soap-opera than a police procedural. The show was The Bill, a title taken from one of the more affectionate nicknames given by villains to their oppressors and when it came to and end in 2010 after twenty-six years, it had knocked up over 2400 episodes. The show was originally created by Thames TV and set in the fictional Sun Hill police station in east London and has earned the title of the UK's longest running police or detective series. The theme music saw several changes across the years. the final version being heavier on bass and distortion than the typically 1980s original.
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The Bill
Created by Thames TV - 2400 episodes 1984 - 2010 |
Before we leave the 1980s behind us, it's probably a good idea to see what was going on over in the States. Although this blog is mainly focused on the UK, there were a few landmark American shows that we must take a look at - and helpfully, apart from clever scripting and fine acting, they have distinctive signature themes too.
The first started in 1981 and was the highly influential Hill Street Blues. Created by Steve Bochco, in its first season alone it won 8 Emmy Awards and in 1993 was named by the US listings magazine TV Guide as the "Best All-time cop show". It tells the lives and stories of a the staff at a single police station and was one of the first shows to have several story-threads running at the same time, rather than just focusing on one plot-line and how it's resolved. Filming took place almost documentary style at times, adding an air of reality - which was a welcome change from the often fantastical elements that had crept into the police and detective shows of the previous decade. It ran for seven seasons and is still looked upon as a high water mark in what can be done in a fast-moving cop show.
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| Hill Street Blues (NBC - 1981-1987) |
Whilst Hill Street Blues was based in an unnamed city, there was no doubting the location of the second show which kicked off in 1984: Miami Vice. It couldn't have been more different, but in its own way, it too was highly influential. Based around the lives and antics of two under-cover cops Crockett and Tubbs, it made great use of contemporary music in its shows, often reflecting the New Wave culture of the early-mid 1980s. The theme music was by Jan Hammer and with discordant notes and striking breaks there was no doubt which show was being watched. Created by NBC, it ran for five seasons, chalking up over 100 shows in that time.
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| Miami Vice (NBC - 1984 - 1989) |
The final show worthy of mention is different again and, in some ways, reflects the changes in policing that Juliet Bravo and The Gentle Touch had explored in the UK. The show was Cagney & Lacey, two female detectives battling against crime and sexism - but also showing their home lives and relationships too, such relationships having obvious ups and downs as a result of the demands of the job. It launched on CBS in 1982 and ran for seven seasons. The eponymous cops - wonderfully played by Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly - also battled against the TV network as there were a couple of occasions when the series was cancelled because of low ratings. Letter-writing campaigns finally persuaded CBS to try, try again - and when it re-emerged in 1983, it was in a new time-slot and ratings surged.
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| Cagney & Lacey (CBS - 1982 - 1988) |
DRAMA - POLICE & DETECTIVE: 1990s
The last twenty years or so have witnessed an explosion in the number of TV channels: viewing has become ever more fragmented and the mass-viewing of a popular drama at the same time has almost passed into history. This has an effect on how memorable - or otherwise - we believe a signature tune to be: if you only hear it infrequently, if you;re not able to chat about it with friends and colleagues, does the music ingrain itself in quite the same way as it did in the 1960s? The other effect of more channels has been the outsourcing of much drama production by the big networks to independent companies: 25% of the BBC's output must be bought in from such independents. For out purposes, this can mean a fresh approach - new people, new ideas - and thus, potentially, some fascinating signature tunes.
Throughout much of the 90s and beyond, the staple police shows were there - The Bill, Morse, Taggart - all shows produced or screened by the ITV companies. And in the first few years of that decade, ITV were to add to their portfolio with five new productions.It was almost as if the BBC had been sidelined (although, as we shall see, they had their own modest successes) and their rivals had hung a blue lamp outside their headquarters. First out of the blocks was Prime Suspect, a lavishly produced set of mini-series that ran from 1991 through to 2006: written by Lynda La Plante and produced by Granada, they pulled off a coup by casting Helen Mirren in the lead role - DCI Jane Tennison. The shows varied in length between two and three hours and were clearly aimed at being Event Viewing: plotting, acting, script - everything was really on the ball and it's hard to believe that there were only 17 actual episodes broadcast across those 16 years.
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Prime Suspect
(Granada - 1991-2006) |
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| Heartbeat (Yorkshire TV - 1992 - 2010) |
The following year saw the first of a new twist on the police procedural - a historical drama. There had - of course - been dramas set in the past previously such as Sherlock Holmes and Raffles, but this new show was freshly created and set in a more *nostalgic* period: it was Heartbeat,produced by Yorkshire Television and a series that ran for eighteen years and some 372 episodes. Set in 1960s rural North Yorkshire, it was based around a group of police officers and their "patch" and provided plenty of chances for lingering countryside shots of the North York Moors as well as a wide range of 1960s pop hits on the soundtrack to provide context. This even led to the signature tune, a cover version of the Buddy Holly number Heartbeat sung by original lead, Nick Berry. Unlike the often grim reality of Prime Suspect, Heartbeat was a sometimes charming, cosy and inoffensive show and clearly struck a chord with its target audience.
Another ITV show that was more often in the cosy camp than not arrived in 1992: this was a vehicle for character actor David Jason: A Touch Of Frost. It too was a Yorkshire TV production and was initially based on the series of novels by R D Wingfield. Jason played DI William "Jack" Frost, a tough career cop who had to handle complex cases despite the interference from his superiors. As with Prime Suspect, *less is more* was the mantra, so although each show typically ran for two hours, only 38 episodes were made in its eighteen year run.
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| A Touch Of Frost (Yorkshire TV - 1992-2010) |
The fourth in our ITV five was altogether a different prospect: Cracker. It was a Granada production, launched in 1993 and featured Robbie Coltrane as a criminal psychologist working with the police ion Manchester. His attention to behaviours in others didn't always exhibit well in his own life: very much an antihero, he was an alcoholic, a gambler, more than a bit overweight and for all his brilliance, not really the sort of person to form any sort of relationship with. It ran for three series until 1995 - and a handful of specials have followed since, the most recent in 2006. The scripts were by Jimmy McGovern and there's no doubt that his ear for language helped bring some authenticity to the series.
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Cracker (Granada TV - 1993-1995
and Specials to 2006) |
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| Wycliffe (HTV - 1994-1998) |
The final of our five ITV dramas is perhaps the most interesting - partly because it was produced by one of the smaller ITV contractors (HTV) and also because of its location out in the wild of Cornwall. Policing is a very different kind of beast in such avowedly rural areas - and by focusing on the declining industries of the area, the ebb and flow of the tourist trade and the real difficulties of finding work, the series offered more than just a neatly concluded plot each week. Jack Shepherd played Detective Superintendent Wycliffe and the show ran to 38 episodes across five seasons. The theme music is also a little bit different from the rest: there's almost an element of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells in the background and the orchestration features some effective violin playing that jumps in at various points.
So, what was going on over at the BBC?
It did seem that traditional police procedural shows were not high on the radar. There were genre attempts such as the Science Fiction series Star Cops (to which we shall return in a future blog), but not very much continuing detective dramas. The situation would change very much for the better in the early part of the new century, but it wasn't until 1996 that the BBC persevered with a show that was to lead the way to the rise once again of some fine shows. That year saw the launch of Dalziel & Pascoe, a detective series based on the novels of Reginald Hill. Warren Clarke played Detective Superintendent Dalziel, a bluff no-nonsense northerner - often politically incorrect and very "old school" in his approach to "coppering". His subordinate, DI Pascoe (played by Colin Buchanan) is the opposite - university, polite, full of the latest detection techniques and guaranteed not to be able to get on with his boss. Their relationship is essentially the show - and it continued an increasing trend for fewer bu longer episodes in a series. It ran to 46 shows across its eleven year run to 2007.
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Dalziel & Pascoe
(BBC - 1996-2007) |
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Midsomer |Murders
(ITV - 1997 - Current) |
A year after the BBC's Dalziel & Pascoe first aired, ITV discovered that it had another big hit on its hands when the reaction to the first few episodes of Midsomer Murders was very positive. It was another glossy production - but one that would have great international appeal through its rose-tinted view of the English country landscape. Set in the fictional county of Midsomer - which looks a lot like Oxfordshire and The Cotswolds - it starred John Nettles as DCI Tom Barnaby. The local constabulary had to contend with many a bizarre murder in each episode and it was clearly a dangerous place to live. Many of the characters were larger than life and although it has its darker moments, there is an air of gentle humour that pervades many of the plot-lines. Even the theme tune has a slightly jaunty, rural, spooky feel to it. It has recently celebrated its 100th edition and looks set to keep going for a few more yet.
DRAMA - POLICE & DETECTIVE: 2000s
The turn of the new century came and went - and it was clear at the BBC that they needed to invest more money into drama: ITV had stolen a march and increasing competition to buy US TV shows was also now coming from Sky television: the solution was clear - launch some new progarmming that looked as if it might have *legs*. Police procedural shows benefited and in the first part of the noughties, two highly promising shows premiered, both very different from each other. The millennium year itself saw the launch of Waking The Dead, a fine series based around a *cold case* unit headed up by Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd, played by Trevor Eve. The unit includes a psychological profiler, a forensic scientist and a clutch of CID officers - plenty of opportunity for story-lines, relationship issues and all manner of old unsolved murder cases requiring their skilled ministrations. The theme music was suitably dramatic and suspenseful with heavy drums and discordant notes. Waking The Dead ran for eleven years and clocked up 90 episodes - and even spawned a one-off series The Body Farm which focused solely on the forensic aspects of the work.
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Waking The Dead
(BBC - 2000-2011) |
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| New Tricks (BBC - 2003 - Current) |
The other new show started in 2003. A special police unit is created in London to re-investigate unsolved crimes - and initially, it seems that to be a member of the team is to be side-lined in some kind of Elephant's Graveyard. The show? New Tricks, a highly successful series which brings wit and humour to the piecing together of solutions to old cases. The team - a group of misfits in many ways - are greater than the sum of their parts and the show producers went for some top quality screen actors to make the show really work. James Bolam, Dennis Waterman, Amanda Redmond and the wonderful Alun Armstrong. The stories stretch credulity a little, there are plenty of references to old age - but with fine scripts and taut acting, it's an ongoing success. And the theme tune? Sung by Dennis Waterman himself.
Over at ITV, now a single entity rather than a conglomeration of regional companies, there was some energy being put into crime drama too. Some were a bit under par - Murder In Suburbia (2004/5) but in Wire in The Blood, launched in 2002, there was a original and clever take on the genre. Based on the highly regarded crime novels by Val McDermid, the series stars Robson Green as Dr Tony Hill, a clinical psychologist at the local university who is called in to help the police. Hill is a flawed character himself and many of his insights into criminal motivation come from some of his darker moments - and there's potentially an element of bi-polar disorder about some of his streams of thought and action. It's gritty, filmed largely on location and clearly had a decent amount of money spent on it.The theme music is highly stylised and electronic - trip-hop meets dub in some respects - and underpins the theme of the show very nicely indeed. Episodes ran to ninety minutes each and the series came to an end in 2008 after ITV felt that the high production costs were no longer viable.
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ITV - Wire In The Blood
(2002 - 2008) |
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| Rebus (STV - 2000-2007) |
Another new ITV series came from Scottish Television and was based on the Rebus novels by Ian Rankin. They're set in Edinburgh - and the city plays a key role in the TV version (simply called Rebus), a setting that brings the right mix of light and gloom to the excellent source material. Ken Stott played the title role of Rebus in the first two series and was replaced by John Hannah for the final two. Each episode ran to feature-length and only 14 episodes have been made - and at this stage, a decent copy of the theme music has yet to surface.
Before we bring things up to date with the current crop of shows from both the BBC and ITV, we do need to pay one final visit to our overseas cousins in the States. This century has seen a veritable explosion of cop and detective shows over there: every network and premium channel has several: indeed, there are dedicated channels showing nothing but police procedural dramas. Most, it must be said, are probably not worth our attention, but there is one that I do want to highlight - and it was a show that *broke the mould* in as much as such things can happen today. The show? The Wire.
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| The Wire (HBO - 2002-2008) |
The Wire - on the face of it - is a standard cop show based in a decaying urban part of am industrial city. The police have it tough trying to keep crime in check - and the locals exist by dealing drugs and petty thievery to get by. But, The Wire is so much more than that. We get right inside the mindset of both police and criminals: we see and hear how drug dealing (in some ways) keeps the neighbourhood going - and we also see how bent cops and corrupt politicians make decisions based on their gains as opposed to helping to improve social cohesion. Created by David Simon, it launched in 2002 and was set in Baltimore: the ensemble of actors rally seemed ti live their roles and across the five seasons and sixty episodes, you really did feel that you understood the motivations and actions of the characters. Grim, dirty, violent - but also realistic, numbing and a real tour-de-force of creativity. And, some excellent theme music, the basic song - Tom Waits' Way Down In The Hole - being performed by a different artist for each season.
DRAMA - POLICE & DETECTIVE: TODAY
If we look back to the 1950s and 1960s, the police procedural was a consistent part of both the BBC and ITV and their programme scheduling. It had some lean periods thereafter, but since drama per se has become by far and away the most popular of TV genres, our regular fix of police and detective programmes show no sign of fading away. The state of play right now is that both ITV and BBC have strong programmes, the satellite channels are awash with imports and in the past few years, we've also been treated to Scandinavian Noir, a whole slew of fine productions that have gained a strong audience here in the UK. These include The Bridge, The Killing and Wallander - and they show no sign of abating. So what does our home-produced output look like now?
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| BBC - Inspector George Gently (2007 - Current) |
The BBC has ongoing shows such as New Tricks. ITV has Midsomer Murders. To the mix we must add several other key shows with fascinating theme tunes that have appeared in the past seven or eight years. The BBC has run with Inspector George Gently, another example of retro-fitting a show into the past, again the 1960s being the chosen decade. It's set in the north-east snd each season advances a year or two and the latest clutch of episodes saw us dangerously close to the 1970s. Then there's been the great success of another mini-series with extended-length show, Luther, a striking and often violent depiction of policing in modern London with a terrific central peformance from Idris Elba (who also starred in The Wire).
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| BBC - Luther (2010 - 2013) |
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| BBC - The Fall (2013 - Current) |
Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame) has starred as a senior police officer investigating a possible serial killer in Belfast - The Fall, a show that has been renewed for a second series - and then there is possibly one of the best shows the BBC have produced - Line Of Duty. Line Of Duty gets to the heart of what can go on to corrupt and distort the way in which the police work to serve the public. It involves the activities of an anti-corruption squad in their complex and challenging efforts to expose bent police officers - and to see supreme acting of the highest order, watch the just completed second series and see how Keeley Hawes inhabits her character and makes you truly wonder whether she is corrupt or not.
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| BBC - Line Of Duty (2012 - Current) |
Over at ITV, there are three excellent shows that are still in production - we covered Scott & Bailey in the introductory blog last week (read and listen right here: Small Screen Theme Time - Introduction). The other two are as similar as chalk and cheese, but they do illustrate the many different approaches that can be taken to police procedurals. First up is DCI Banks, a Yorkshire based series, but unlike those such as Heartbeat, this one mainly is urban-based and has an excellent ensemble cast who really make it work. Starring Stephen Tomkinson in the lead role, it started in 2010 and has run to 20 episodes so far.
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| DCI Banks (ITV - 2010 - Current) |
The second ITV series is an unusual one: it's based on a long-running and popular American drama called Law & Order: in the States, it's run to hundreds of episodes and spawned several spin-offs. The UK version is co-produced by ITV and Universal (the US producers) and it takes selected American stories which are then re-written and re-made for the British market. The theme music remains - as does the format, half the show showing a police investigation (usually in London) to apprehend a criminal - and then the prosecution side in court with the CPS trying to get a conviction. Despite its origins, it works very well and it would be hard to detect any anomalies in the UK shows compared to the US originals. It started in 2009 and thus far has run to 49 episodes.
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| Law & Order:UK (ITV - 2009 - Current) |
AND THERE WE HAVE IT
That's it: you can take a well-earned rest and pat yourself on the back for getting this far. You might just want to forget the words and just listen in to all the signature themes, especially those that'll bring back the memories. What have we learnt from this trawl through time? Cop shows are cops shows, I suppose - but there are many sub-variants of the genre and each tends to opt for a certain type of tune, tune to provide mood music or a sign-post to the type of content. Clearly, some are very much dated and "of their time" whilst others live on, head and shoulders above the rest.
Police and detective dramas are very much in the ascendant again today - and across the decades, there have been many, many shows. It was a challenge to try and condense this installment down to a practical level, but by choosing (perhaps!) the most extensive genre to kick off means that we won't be faced with such as mountain of music delights next time around.
Join me, then, next time when we look at Historical Dramas and Westerns.
Happy listening.
Alan Dorey
15th April 2014
Excellent Alan. Reading about the old tv cops brought back a lot of memories. My late mum was a huge fan of them all until she passed away in 1992. Thanks for the memories :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Mo - it's great it brought back those memories: one of the things I hope that this blog will do from time to time. Appreciate you taking the time to read this *ahem* longer-than-usual piece!
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