Classic Drama
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CLASSIC DRAMA TV’S TOP CRIME FIGHTERSPC GEORGE DIXON ITV bosses are asking viewers to vote for their Dixon Of Dock Green (Jack Warner) TOP OF Strictly speaking, he was dead, you know. Right from favourite small-screen sleuths. Who would you pick? THE COPS, the very first episode. PC George Dixon, the friendly ITV3, East End bobby who became a staple of Saturday Our TV Editor, Mike Ward, names his top ten night viewing throughout the 60s (“Evening, all…”), SATURDAY & had actually featured in the 1950 film The Blue Lamp LIEUTENANT COLUMBO SUNDAY – at the end of Columbo (Peter Falk) which he was shot The scruffy raincoat, the bumbling manner, the dead (by Dirk chewed cigars. Was this guy for real? Oh, you bet. Bogarde, if you The LAPD homicide cop was a master at lulling want the full murder suspects into a false sense of security and trivia). Artistic allowing them to believe they could effortlessly license, outsmart him. But it was that killer question however, (“Just one more thing…” Columbo would mumble, enabled Jack as he was about to leave the room) that would sow Warner’s the seed of the culprit’s downfall. The fun was affable cop watching Columbo (officially we never got to know DIXON RAN to make a his first name, although anoraks think it was Frank) miraculous untangle the mystery in his own incisive fashion. FOR A recovery, and the REMARKABLE BBC 21 YEARS. series which IN GEORGE’S launched in 1955 was WORLD, POLICE destined to run for BRUTALITY 21 years. Shamelessly unspectacular in its WOULD BE A criminal themes, in CLIP ROUND George’s world, police brutality would be a THE EAR, clip round the ear, SONNY sonny. EDDIE ‘FITZ’ FITZGERALD Cracker (Robbie Coltrane) You had to love Robbie Coltrane’s Fitz, the Manchester-based criminal psychologist created by Jimmy McGovern. He’d drink too much, eat too much, smoke too much, cheat on his wife – and blow most of what he’d earned down at the bookies. But you couldn’t help feeling that Fitz’s personal flaws were an essential part of his professional armoury. Wasn’t it his instinctive connection with the human dark side that enabled Fitz to burrow so deeply into the minds of the low-life he encountered? Besides which, just take a look at the guy. Be honest, would YOU dare withhold evidence from him? DCI ENDEAVOUR MORSE Inspector Morse (John Thaw) Yes, his first name was Endeavour. We were a decade into Morse’s 13-year run (the 1997 episode Death Is Now My Neighbour) when this curious fact finally emerged, such was the character’s enigmatic quality, but when it did it felt as if this defiant loner had allowed us a rare glimpse into his intensely private world. John Thaw’s Jag-driving bachelor character, in all honestly, was a cantankerous soul and an intellectual snob – only happy when escaping the human grimness with which his job routinely confronted him and immersing himself in his cryptic crossword or a spot of Wagner. That, or in a decent pint SCOPEFEATURES; REX FEATURES; GETTY IMAGES; PA; PICTORIAL PRESS PICTORIAL PA; GETTY IMAGES; REX FEATURES; SCOPEFEATURES; of bitter in one of Oxford’s finer hostelries. saturdaY magazine 17 DS CHRISTINE CAGNEY and DETECTIVE MARY BETH LACEY Cagney & Lacey (Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly) These NYPD crime fighters broke new ground when they burst onto our screens in the 80s. Hence the stack of Emmys that came their way. While Charlie’s Angels were implausible, pouting pin-ups, this no- nonsense pairing was all about JEFF RANDALL and MARTY HOPKIRK nailing the bad guys. Cagney was Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope) single, thick-skinned, married to The most effective TV detective partnerships have always been chalk-and-cheese affairs. the job (and would later develop Detective Marty Hopkirk’s biggest strength was that he was dead, (he died on duty in the a booze problem, like her police very first episode, shown in September 1969) which proved rather handy when he returned officer dad had done), while as a ghost to assist his old sleuthing partner, Jeff Randall. When Marty (played by Kenneth Lacey was a more sensitive soul Cope, better known these days as Coronation Street’s Jed) – and Jeff weren’t busy bickering, who’d head home each night to they were able to use this strange state of affairs to significant advantage. her husband Harvey and the kids. DCI GENE HUNT MISS JANE MARPLE Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes Marple (Philip Glenister) (Geraldine McEwan) Why is Hunt such a TV legend? In Life Agatha Christie’s elderly On Mars, colleague Sam Tyler called him amateur sleuth actually has a “an overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine- lot in common with America’s stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe Lieutenant Columbo. No, with a superiority complex and an seriously, she does – bear unhealthy obsession with male bonding”. with me. Like the shabby Hunt – the guy Sam found himself raincoated LAPD cop, this working with after travelling back in dear old lady’s greatest time to 1973 – was your archetypal strength as a solver of murder punch-first-ask-questions-later 70s mysteries is her apparent copper. Hunt’s Sweeney-style approach befuddled, confused nature, should have made him loathsome to cunningly allowing baddies to viewers, but his excesses somehow believe she could barely solve became an acceptable guilty pleasure. a crossword clue. It is the most ingeniously deceptive charade. Behind the tweedy outfits, the fuddy-duddy hats and the ever-present knitting needles, there’s a razor-sharp mind. She also takes great delight in outsmarting whichever bumbling local copper has been assigned to the case. DS JANE TENNISON DETectives Prime Suspect DAVE STARSKY (Helen Mirren) and KEN ‘HUTCH’ There aren’t a lot of laughs in HUTCHINSON DS Jane Tennison’s world. Every Starsky & Hutch day seems like one battle after (Paul Michael Glaser, another, with very few glimmers David Soul) of hope. There’s the routine Forget the modern-day movie. battle against the criminal There was only one Starsky underworld; the battle to & Hutch worth getting hold her own in a workplace excited about – the mid-70s dominated by sexist, old-school small-screen pairing of Glaser male officers who clearly find her and Soul, tearing through the a threat; the battle to establish streets of Bay City in their some kind of healthy balance red Ford Torino. Ably between her work and her assisted by their jive-talking disintegrating private life and the underworld contact Huggy battle to beat the bottle. But it’s Bear (Antonio Fargas) – and precisely these human frailties, not afraid of the odd man- and Jane’s determination not to hug – the pair got themselves let them distract her from her out of pretty violent scrapes objectives, which make Helen and clearly loved one Mirren’s troubled cop such a another. In a wholly manly compelling character. CREDITS way, you understand. 18 saturdaY magazine saturdaY magazine PB.