Police Series

Introduction to the Genre

Series are those programmes which have the same stars and the same locations every week but which have different stories each episode. These stories are self contained, unlike serials whose stories continue from one episode to the next. In the early days of television the most popular series were westerns, but since the 1950's the police series has taken its place as the most successful series genre. Furthermore, unlike the western it is a genre that has been easily adapted by many countries worldwide. (Alvarado*)

The two genres, both in television and film, have several parallels. Thematically they are concerned with 'justice' versus savagery or 'the frontier'. They feature lone, rogue males (consider Clint Eastwood's highly influential roles in both genres); duos with an element of comedy (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Alias Smith and Jones / Starsky and Hutch, Regan and Carter, Morse and Lewis) or teams (The Magnificent Seven/ Hill Street Blues, The Bill etc.) They also feature powerful individual villains and their sidekicks or anonymous groups ('Indians'/gangs) who are dehumanised by the lack of development of any kind of character.

Furthermore, much of the action and pace of police series: ('tracking', chasing and fighting) is borrowed from the western as are many characteristic camera techniques such as the use of close ups, high and low angle shots, fast intercutting in addition to all the visual cliches of hide outs, shoot outs and death scenes. Therefore, while westerns were not the only influence on police series they were important because they anticipated several key features and developments in the genre.

A Concise History of Police Series

The following account of the evolution of television police series covers some of the major developments in America - where the genre originated, and in Britain. It concentrates on key moments in the history of television representations of the police and examines some of the ideological background to the debate.

The 1950's

TV westerns such as 'Wanted-Dead or Alive' and 'Rawhide' were filmed for the American television networks by major studios such as Warner from the mid-fifties, often using a combination of stock film and cheap, reprocessed studio sets, props and costumes. Because they were filmed rather than broadcast live, these popular, and seemingly endless number of made-for-TV series were both relatively cheap and highly exportable. From 1954 the major studios were also filming crime series for TV. When the popularity of the rather simple minded westerns with their cold-war morality began to fade in the 1960's, the studios and TV companies simply stepped up their production of police series. These were equally suited to the conveyor belt production techniques and resources of both film and TV studios. They also presented a similar black and white morality but tended, in American series at least, to avoid the kind of moralistic monologues that concluded many Westerns.

'Dragnet' which had been on film since it began in 1951, was the first American 'cop show' to be shown on British television. It was supposedly based on real life crimes found in the files of the Los Angeles Police Department. It ran for 300 episodes from 1951 to 1958 and was only the first in a flood of American police series that, along with the Western , began America's long colonisation of the world's television screens. As Francis Wheen (1985) notes:

'The foreign earnings from these sales represented pure profit to the film companies, who could therefore afford to charge ridiculously low prices - as little as $1,000 for a one hour episode. In countries such as Canada and Australia, indigenous programmes all but disappeared from view: why bother to spend large sums of money on a home produced drama when an American tele-film could be had for a tenth of the cost ?'

The popularity of American police series on British screens led to Britain's first detective series 'Fabian of the Yard' (first broadcast in 1954). Robert Fabian, a well dressed, pipe smoking North American (his nationality was aimed at the larger TV audience across the Atlantic) assisted Scotland Yard in catching the, frequently foreign, criminals. Police techniques were often explained and the cases pieced together in a routine, logical manner so that it seemed only a matter of time before the suspect was apprehended. Dispassionate, professional dialogue added to the sense of 'docu-drama' that this and other early police series encouraged. The lesson, that crime did not pay was spliced into the implacable nature of police procedure and the police's role represented as one of 'noble defenders of the public'.

Perhaps the most famous and longest running series from this period is 'Dixon of Dock Green' (1955-76) based on the British film 'The Blue Lamp' (1949). The series revolved around George Dixon, a bobby on the beat. His reassuring presence emerged at the beginning of each show from the darkness of a London night whistling 'Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner' to address the viewers directly; "Evenin' All..." . Each case was a foregone conclusion, with Dixon introducing the story to camera - a technique common to police series of the time. For two decades the series maintained a highly idealised view of the police, as represented by Dixon. He combined authority and gentleness; bravery and common sense; dedication and humanity. His private life was shown to be as caring, upright and fatherly as his public role as guardian, neighbour and friend of the community. The series has been attacked as a 'drama of reassurance', 'sanctimonious' and 'divorced from reality' and it certainly appeared dated, despite various changes, by the time it was pulled from the BBC schedules in 1976.

The 1960's

By contrast 'Z-Cars' shocked its first viewers by the grittiness of its characterisation. It was also highly popular with 14 million people watching the first series in 1962. The series, at first, was live - but prerecorded scenes were filmed 'on location' outside the studios and the programme strove for a 'documentary look'. The programme initially encountered fierce opposition from many senior policemen (the Chief Constable of Lancashire was one of the first to withdraw his support) for its depiction of a force that could be rude, aggressive and unpleasant. The setting was Kirkby, a neglected inner city district in Merseyside with a real life 'wild west' reputation. The series' writer John Hopkins was interested in the effects of crime and criminality on the police. His policemen drank, swore, got things wrong, even beat up their wives. Yet despite brutish characters such as Barlow, the policemen, as in virtually every series since, were essentially good men who cared about the lives and crimes they were involved in.

David Buxton (1990) observes,

'..the police series proudly waved the banner of realism throughout the 1960's, integrating some of the formal properties of the soap opera construction of an in-depth personality by focusing on the continuing dramas of everyday life) within what was presented as an accurately rendered description of police routine work. One of the practical difficulties of this format was that realism required a large number of regular characters and therefore complex plotting and writing as in a theatrical piece: the British police series was something of a cross between soap opera and drama. This formal solution was not taken up on Amercian television until the 1980's, when 'Hill Street Blues' episodes were farmed out to different writers in fifteen minute segments. realism demanded that stories be sometimes left with threads dangling, sometimes even with police failure: this was not yet acceptable for many Amercian viewers, for whom the presence of violent crime was justifiable only by its eventual punishment.'

Police series like 'Softly, Softly' and 'Z Cars' emphasised the 'human dimension' of police work. The social-democratic consensus of Britain in the 1960's was reflected in the representations of the police who understood and related to the human qualities of the criminals they dealt with. The authoritarian and repressive view of law and order as personified by Inspector Barlow in 'Z Cars' (at times, unsympathetically portrayed as a bully) was, a minority tendency, for the most part held in check.

In the 1960's in America, political and public concerns were being expressed about the rising levels of screen violence in police series such as 'The Untouchables' - set in the 1920's. (Interestingly, the 1920's, like the 1960's, were a time when America was violently divided although the issues were apparently different: prohibition rather than civil rights.) Newton Minow of the Federal Communications Commision (FCC) described television in this period as a 'vast wasteland' of 'game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad-men, western good-men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons...' (Wheen 1985) His threat to remove the networks' licences was taken, at least partly, seriously. Similarly, whenever there was enough public clamour to reduce screen violence - as there was following the assassinations of the Jack and Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King - the networks toned down the levels of brutality until the issue was out of the public eye. They also increased the use of car chases and explosions to compensate, particularly following the success of 'Bullitt' and 'The French Connection' at the cinema.

The 1970's

Towards the end of the 1960's as the continuing racial crisis grew, and the generation gap widened through opposition to the Vietnam War, television executives witnessed a widespread rejection of commercial television programmming - particularly by 'important' (i.e. soon-to-be-wealthy) college-educated consumers who dismissed it as 'mass intoxication' of conservative values. As Buxton (1990) argues:

'A new type of hero was needed to breach the divide between young and old, between civil society and the 'Establishment'. This was to be a new breed of policeman, an individualist who worked within the system in his own, unorthodox manner, upholding the social order but fighting injustice from above as well as below and protecting the citizens from a psychopathic criminal class by virtue of his superior personality. The private detective of the Chandler type, a romantic individualist who is 'anti-establishment' because of his special sensibility and cynical knowingness (rather than any political conviction), was collapsed and remodelled into an offbeat representative of authority and the existing order.'

In the world of cinema - a medium in crisis in the 1970's and hunting for an audience, any audience - such figures were occasionally forced to reject the police establishment they had joined ('Serpico' is the classic example). Such wholesale rejection never occurred in television. In vaguely liberal and multi-racial shows like 'Ironside', 'Mod Squad' and 'Hawaii Five-O' the police officers often behaved more like tolerant social workers than tough lawmen. By the early 1970's, however, the streetwise, 'cool' elements of mythical 'hippie' police were being combined with a drive for violent, conclusive resolutions to escalating crime. American economic crisis unleashed, in part, by the oil crisis, and the ideological insecurity posed by Vietnam and Watergate led to shows set against a background of endemic urban crime in which neither liberal, nor conservative crime solving methods could be wholly endorsed. The success of police detectives like those found in 'Kojak' and 'Starsky and Hutch' lay in their ethnic street connections and exploitation of underworld networks combined with a willingness to engage violently with organised criminals and deranged killers.

Many of these elements were copied directly in Britain where such American shows were equally popular. Violence was certainly at the core of 'The Sweeney' (1975-78). This programme marked a watershed in representations of the police showing its heroes Regan and Carter from the Flying Squad as rough, boozing cockneys who got things done by breaking the rules. When they were not jumping out of vans with pick axe handles, they were in confrontation with their superior officers for whom they showed absolute contempt. Far from the family man ideals of 'Dixon of Dock Green', Regan was a divorcee who drank on and off duty in dingy pubs and strip joints and discussed "pulling birds" with his partner. Regan and Carter consorted with criminals for information and threatened and intimidated suspects in interrogation. While most senior officers were appalled by this representation of their force, it was, according to serving officers, very popular and influential with police trainees and officers at the time, and in several respects true to life. A line from the series, "You're not going to hit me, my sergeant is going to hit me." was, apparently, taken from an actual case. (Sweeting 1993)

Another British series that owed much to the formula established by 'Starsky and Hutch' was 'The Professionals' (1977-1983). Unlike so many of the somewhat camp spy pop series of the 1960's such as 'The Man from Uncle', 'Mission:Impossible' and the British series 'The Avengers' : 'The Professionals' took itself, and its portrayal of violence, more seriously. Bodie and Doyle, agents of CI5 - a quasi-military crime breaking and anti-terrorist unit - operated, like James Bond, with a 'license to kill'. Doyle, like Ken Hutchinson, played the sensitive, educated, humanist half - more likely to drink wine or herbal tea at home, a martial arts expert who could be found meditating or pursuing other 'feminine' arts like cooking. The dark-haired Doyle, like Dave Starsky, was a macho braggart, who drank pints and boxed and had a wolfish grin and eye for women. Their Capri was Britain's answer to Starsky's Ford Torino and there was an equal amount of running around buildings, fighting and shooting. Like 'Starsky and Hutch', 'The Professionals' reconciled a tolerant, jokey veneer with authoritarian methods at a time of widening racial, industrial and class divisions in Britain. The shadowy nature of CI5, its often strikingly similar techniques to the SAS, MI5 and other British secret services and glamorization of violence left the series open to charges of incipient fascism.

Gordon Newman's brief but highly controversial 'Law and Order' series was perhaps the first and only attempt on British television to show the police in a highly unsympathetic light. Newman's thesis - that the police service doesn't contain the odd bad apple, but that, 'because of the pathology of the people who go in there, the whole barrel is unsound' was reflected in the corrupt, violent and ultimately disinterested characterisation of officers like Pile. The programme was described as "outrageous" by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul London and the Prison Officer's Association banned the BBC from filming inside its establishments for a year (Kerr 1990). Nevertheless, police officers were on the set for every shot advising the programme makers and the result had a disturbing authenticity that contributed to the furore it created. The immoral relationship between police and criminal and the suggestion in 'Law and Order' that the police were part of the problem, not the solution was to be a powerful conclusion to a trend in police series that had developed since 'Z Cars'.

The 1980's and 1990's

The development of the police genre in Britain is, however, far from being only one of growing cynicism with the police. In the mid 90's sceptical portrayals of police corruption such as 'Between the Lines' have run at the same time as the simple minded, anodyne innocence of 'Heartbeat' . Even, as Thomas Sutcliffe points out, ''..Dixon of Dock Green', the epitome of consolatory police drama, actually overlapped for a time with 'The Sweeney', a conjunction that now seems unthinkable.'

The 1980's and early 1990's saw several British series with women cast in the leading roles. 'The Gentle Touch', 'C.A.T.S. Eyes', 'Juliet Bravo' and 'Prime Suspect' can be seen as a British response to the popularity of earlier American series like 'Policewoman', 'Charlie's Angels' and 'Cagney and Lacey'. The focus of these programmes often shifts away from the process of catching criminals and 'action' to issues such as the pressures of police work on personal relationships. 'Women's' issues relating to the workplace such as sexism and frustrated promotion are examined as are crimes related to sex (e.g. domestic violence, rape, child abuse). It is interesting to note that the masculinity of male characters in series such as 'The Bill' is an integral part of the characterisation but is seldom explored as an issue, whereas in police dramas which have women as their central characters such gender issues are frequently central and explicit.

Another highly influential American police series was 'Miami Vice' (1985-1990). Described by some commentators as 'MTV Cops', 'Miami Vice' flaunted an overt concern with style, visuals and imagery, frequently interrupting the narrative continuity with rock music sequences . When the series was not in up-beat celebration of the affluence and tropical bounty of Miami (sports cars, beaches, bikini-clad women, palatial mansions) it seemed to plunge into extended scenes of noirish 'atmosphere' and unease. According to Buxton (1990):

'Miami Vice was the first series to make use of neurophysiological research on the viewing process: research carried out in the Communication Technology Laboratory of the University of Michegan has shown that (American) viewers tend to become impatient with overly elaborate stories or characterisations. In an attempt to maintain constant visual and sound excitement, the series uses aesthetic devices from the clip (aggressive camera movements, 'unnatural' colour schemes and mood music) to fill out the story rather than resorting to 'irrelevant' complications of plot and dialogue, both reduced to a minimum. Executive producer Michael Mann's motto was said to be 'no earth tones': sienna, ochre, red and brown were eliminated in favour of rose, lemon, aquamarine, turquoise and peach, the sensuous feel of pastel and fluorescent colours.'

The series employed the same 'Starsky and Hutch' formula of chalk-and-cheese buddies: Sonny Crockett - tough, white, straight-talking, small town Vietnam Vet against Ricardo Tubbs - sensitive, black-Hispanic, New York sophisticate. Both seemed perilously close to the world of easy money and drugs that they investigated. As Fiske (1987) observes 'Crockett and Tubbs are close to voicing the underworld they are meant to control' : Crockett drives a Ferrari, they wear designer clothes, they become involved with women associated with the gangs they are investigating, they act the parts and seemed to flirt with the roles of cocaine dealers or users (in Tubbs' case mirroring the stereotypically Latino drug dealer and literally speaking 'their' language - Spanish), and all this set against a backdrop of images and music that seems at once to celebrate and condemn Miami's vice.

Strinati (1995) sees 'Miami Vice' as an interesting example of post-modernism - its insistence on surface and style and self-conscious references to popular culture. Fiske (1987) goes further by praising the 'liberating', 'disruptive' pleasures and possibility of 'evading' ideology that Miami Vice's post-modern assemblage allows. Buxton (1990) rejects 'the pretence that postmodern style is somehow beyond ideology' and places 'Miami Vice' in a firmly supportive position between the two major pillars of Reaganite free market ideology: 'law and order and conspicuous consumption'. The degree of critical debate that the series provoked was certainly an indication of its significance in the enormous canon of American police series.

The long-running British series 'The Bill' gained recognition for quite different qualities to 'Miami Vice'. Originally an hour long series made using lightweight, handheld video cameras, 'The Bill' was first transmitted in 1984 and was relaunched in 1988 as a half hour bi-weekly with audiences at around 12 million. The programme mimicked the 'fly on the wall' style of Roger Graef's mould breaking series about the Thames Valley force 'Police'. Former executive producer of The Bill Peter Cregeen described the 'philosophy' of the series as, ' an attempt to reflect current society and make it documentarily accurate - which was very much the philosophy that lay behind Z Cars.'

The Metropolitan Police are happy to cooperate with the makers of The Bill, based at the mythical Sun Hill station, via the ex police officers who act as the programme's advisors. Nurturing better relations with the media, and by extension promoting more positive images of the police, has been a prime objective of senior policemen as far back as Scotland Yard Commissioner Harold Scott in the 1950s who encouraged the making of Dixon of Dock Green. Surveys have shown that the public gets most of its information about the police from the series. Alec Marnoch a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police tasked with driving through an improved image of the force with the public admits to using the series to spread the message of a new 'customer-oriented service', 'I could get it (the message) to a wider audience through putting it over The Bill than sometimes through sending out police orders or written instructions.' (Sweeting 1993)

This suggests that police series can play an ideological role in legitimising the police and the powers they are given. With several elements of society at odds with these powers: miners, printers and racial minorities in the 1980s; travellers, poll tax demonstrators and road protestors in the 1990s, just to take a few examples - representations of the police play a critical role in maintaining a public concept of 'order' and the police's 'duty' in maintaining it.

The large number of police series on television today is an indication of the continuing popularity of the genre. Establishing the star status of the performers is a crucial factor in a programme's ratings. Actors such as Jimmy Nail in Taggart, John Thaw in 'Inspector Morse' and Robbie Coltrane in 'Cracker' are seen as key factors in those series' success. The genre has, nevertheless, been popular for at least a hundred years in novels, short stories and the cinema. Crime fiction offers a narrative puzzle that can involve the audience or reader. Television continues the tradition of Hollywood and fiction writers like Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler by adapting many of their stories and characters. Another reason for its popularity may be that it allows us to bear witness to violence and taboo acts, to consider the unthinkable, 'with the reassuring knowledge that order will be restored at the close'. Furthermore, they provide an escape from the routine of our work and lives: 'Modern police heroes work by inspiration, hunch and decisive action, not by boring attention to repetitive detail and cautious, modest advances'. (Clarke 1987))

However, the sheer number and bewildering variety of crime series may also reflect a lack of public confidence or consensus about the police and how they should be represented. With modern society increasingly fragmented, representations of the police, like the police themselves have to be all things to all men. Low public confidence in the police or its ability to deal with a rising wave of crime appears to be matched by a need for fictional heroes and resolutions. These may be historical or escapist fantasies with little bearing on modern reality or they may be apparently 'realistic', 'gritty' and often gruesome depictions of police work. But they are fictional no matter how authentic in detail they appear and should be judged quite separately as such.

Exercises

Task 1.

Analyse an episode of two contrasting police series. Make careful notes of the names of the central characters - (police and criminals), their costumes, rank, speech, mannerisms and character, methods of dealing with investigation, type of crimes, sets and settings, 'atmosphere' of the series, viewing time and probable audience.

Use these notes to write the following essay. You may want to use the headings suggested above as guidelines for the paragraphs that make up the essay:

Essay

Compare the representation of police and criminals in two (or more) contrasting police series of your choice. Are there any marked similarities or differences ? What generalisations could be made about the representation of police and criminals in police series as a whole ?

Task 2

Examine the representation of women in police series. Are they represented at all, and if so what roles are they given ? What sorts of crimes are they usually involved in - either as criminals or as police officers ? Are women defined differently by the kind of 'issues' they deal with ?

Essay

'Women, or their lives, are often constructed in crime series as damaged, scarred or lacking in some way.'

Examine the evidence for or against this assertion.

(or)

In 'Cagney and Lacey' and other police series featuring major female characters the treatment of crime in terms of 'women's problems' and the foregrounding of domestic issues is merely 'the re-construction and representation of feminism and feminist issues within a patriachal discourse' .(Baehr)

Do you agree ?

Task 3.

Analyse the opening credits for two or more contrasting police series. What do these sequences tell us about the programmes that they introduce ? Consider elements such as: music, settings, action, reoccuring motifs, title and fonts, special effects, pace of editing, lighting, use of colour, costumes and appearance of characters.

Task 4

Devise your own police series. Describe:

a) The central characters

b) The setting

c) The types of crimes investigated

d) The mood of the series - upbeat, uncritical ? (e.g Heartbeat), darker, more ambiguous (e.g. Cracker')

Essay

'Police series reinforce a conventional, class and property based morality and pander to the lowest tastes in society.'

Do you agree ?

Task 5

'The crime thriller conventionally features a number of enigmas - some based on characters, others on events. The central enigma may be about an event such as a murder or robbery. Character based enigmas (a series of suspects) will work towards the resolution of that central enigma.' (Adrian Tilley - The Media Studies Book 1991 Routledge)

Summarise, in no more than two paragraphs, how this feature is shown in a single episode of a crime series you have watched.

Essay

'Genre spells out to the audience the range of pleasures it might expect and thus regulates and activates memory of similar texts and the expectations of this one.' (Fiske, J. 1987 Television Culture Routledge)

What 'pleasures' can an audience expect from a police series ?

Sources:

Alvarado, M. (1987) 'Television and Video' Wayland

Clarke, M. (1987) Teaching Popular Television Heinemann Educational in association with BFI

Buxton, D. (1990) 'From the Avengers to Miami Vice: form and ideology in television series.' Manchester University Press

Sweeting, A. 'A Fair Cop, Guv ?' The Guardian, May '93.

Kerr, P. (1990) Understanding Television ed. Goodwin A and Whannel, G. Routledge

'Barlow, Regan, Pile and Fancy' BBC2 documentary, 1993.

'Politics, Ideology and Popular Culture 2' Open University, 1982.

'New Idea for a Cop Show ? No, It's been Nicked.' The Independent, April 1995.

Cooke, T. (1993) 'Police and Crime' , Oldham Sixth Form College (unpublished) .

Lusted, D. ed. (1991) 'The Media Studies Book' Routledge

Fiske, J. (1987) 'Television Culture' Routledge

Strinati, D. (1995) 'Popular Culture' Routledge