Everything about Z-cars totally explained
» For other meanings, see Zed-car.
Z-Cars (sometimes written as
Z Cars) was a
British television drama series centred on the work of regular beat police officers in the fictional town of Newtown, based on
Kirkby in the outskirts of
Liverpool, in the north-west of
England. Produced by the
BBC and screened on
BBC1, it debuted in January
1962 and ran for 16 years until September
1978. Owing to an administrative quirk, for the first few years of its existence it was produced by the BBC's
documentary department rather than the
drama department.
The programme was created by writers
Troy Kennedy Martin and
Allan Prior with producer
Elwyn Jones, and was a deliberate attempt to create a more realistic portrayal of modern policing than had been seen on British television before. This was a conscious antidote to the BBC's established police drama,
Dixon of Dock Green, which portrayed a very 'safe' and 'cosy' image of a stereotypical 'British bobby'. The main writers included
John Hopkins (who also became
script editor) and
Alan Plater. The writing team created a '
kitchen sink realism' style of scripting unknown on British television at that time. The
Z-Cars theme tune was arranged by
Fritz Spiegl from the traditional
folk song Johnny Todd. At home matches the
Liverpool based
football team,
Everton, play the theme as the players enter the field of play.
In a
2000 poll of industry professionals to find the
100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the
20th century conducted by the
British Film Institute,
Z-Cars was voted into 63rd place. It was also included in an alphabetical list of the forty greatest TV shows published in
Radio Times magazine in August
2003.
Plot
Contrary to popular belief the term doesn't come from the model name of the cars used: Ford Zephyrs and Ford Zodiacs. In fact the Zodiac was never used by UK police services, being essentially an upscale fancy-badged Zephyr. These saloons were fast for their time, place, and cost. The Zephyr was for some years the standard road patrol, ie traffic car (not the same as 'crime car') used by Lancashire and many other Police Services. The term comes from the call signs allocated by the then Lancashire Constabulary and consisting of the Divisional letter in NATO/ICAO phonetic alphabet. In Lancashire in those days police divisions were lettered from the north to the south of the county thus A Division (DHQ Ulverston) was the detached part of the county around Barrow in Furness (since 1977 part of Cumbria), B was Lancaster and so on, letters further into the alphabet were in the south of the county around the Manchester and Liverpool conurbations. Crime cars were manned by uniformed personnel but had a focus on crime rather than traffic or general police duties. eg The two crime cars in P, Stretford Division to the west of Manchester were designated Z-Papa1 and Z-Papa2; There was no V Division and the TV series took the non-existent callsigns Z-Victor 1 and Z-Victor 2 for the storyline.
The stories the series depicted would frequently revolve around the activities of the pairs of officers patrolling that particular week. Riding on the crest of a wave of changing social attitudes and a changing television era, the social realism of
Z-Cars, coupled with the interesting police storylines, garnered huge popularity for the programme, although it was initially somewhat less popular with the real-life police force who disliked the sometimes unsympathetic characterisation of officers. Being set outside of
London in the North of England also helped give it a distinctly regional flavour, something rarely seen on British television at the time, when most
BBC dramas were made and set in the south.
The one character to stay present throughout the entire run of
Z-Cars was Bert Lynch, played by
James Ellis (though
John Phillips as Det. Chief Supt. Robins would reappear sporadically during the show's run - by the end of the series he'd become Chief Constable!). Other major characters in the early days of the programme were
Stratford Johns (Inspector Barlow),
Frank Windsor (Det.Sgt Watt), Robert Keegan (Sgt Blackitt),
Joseph Brady (PC 'Jock' Weir) and
Brian Blessed ('Fancy' Smith). Blessed went on to become a popular film actor also, appearing in films such as
Flash Gordon (
1980),
Henry V (
1989),
Hamlet (
1996) and (
1999). Also appearing in
1960s episodes as David Graham was
Colin Welland, who went on to become a scriptwriter, winning an
Academy Award for
Chariots of Fire in
1981, upon receipt of which he delivered the famous "the British are coming!" speech. Other well known British actors who played regular roles in the early years of the series included
John Thaw and
Leonard Rossiter.
Episodes
Z-Cars ran for 667 episodes in total. The original run came to an end in 1965; The characters of Barlow, Watt and Blackitt were spun-off into a new series
Softly, Softly. Z Cars, however, was revived in March 1967 with only
James Ellis and
Joseph Brady returning from the original show. The revival was produced by the serials department of the BBC in a twice-weekly
soap opera format of 25-minute long episodes. It ran continuously until April
1971 (in colour from early 1970) then returned to a regular season pattern of 50-minute episodes for its final years.
Lost Episodes
As with many British television programmes of the era,
Z-Cars is incomplete in the archives. 1962-5 is reasonably well represented in the archives, though with big gaps in the run. With the 1967 revival, material becomes more patchy. 1967, 1969 and 1970 each have small numbers of surviving episodes. The individual years 1968 and 1971, when the series was being shown almost every week, have no surviving episodes at all. Nevertheless, by luck, around half of the total number of episodes survive.
The original series was one of the very last British television dramas to be screened
live regularly — already a rare practice by the time the programme began in
1962. It was felt that this helped the immediacy and pace of the programme, and episodes were being transmitted live as late as
1965. Most were videotaped for repeat transmission, but the
BBC regularly
wiped tapes after the programmes were thought to have exceeded their usefulness, as agreements with various unions meant that they could only be shown a limited number of times. The amount of space needed to store the large videotapes of the time, as well as the expense of them when they could be re-used more cheaply, were also factors.
However most episodes were '
telerecorded'. This was a fairly primitive (by today's standards) way of preserving a transmission by filming it (to 16mm film) from a specially-adapted monitor screen. Telerecordings could also be used for repeat broadcasts, and, more importantly, for overseas sales. Although foreign buyers were supposed either to return, destroy or forward these telerecordings, many were just archived and have slowly filtered back to the BBC over the years.
One
telerecording of an early episode was returned to writer Allan Prior in the
1980s by an engineer who had taken it home to preserve it because his children had always enjoyed the programme so much and he couldn't bring himself to destroy it. Other early episodes have been returned to the archives by foreign broadcasters from countries such as
Cyprus and the search for lost episodes of sister BBC program
Doctor Who has also occasionally turned up lost
Z-Cars episodes (according to the documentary
Doctor Who: The Missing Years, included on the
BBC Video DVD release
Doctor Who: Lost in Time). Two episodes were returned in 2004 after turning up in a private collection. Unfortunately, colour episodes from the early 1970s are less likely to be recovered, as they were never telerecorded for export.
A list of lost & surviving episodes can be found on the
missing episodes web-site
.
After Z Cars
The spin-off,
Softly, Softly focused on the activities of the regional crime squad, and ran until 1969, when it was again revised and became, running in this form until 1976. The character of Barlow (
Stratford Johns) was one of the best-known figures in British television in the 60s and 70s, and was given several seasons of his own "solo" series,
Barlow at Large (later just
Barlow) between 1971-5. He also joined forces with Watt (
Frank Windsor) to re-investigate the
Jack the Ripper murders for a 6-part series in 1973. This led to another spin-off series,
Second Verdict in which Barlow and Watt looked into other unsolved cases and unsafe convictions from the past.
Frank Windsor made one final appearance as Watt in the last episode of
Z Cars, 'Pressure', in September 1978, with Robins (
John Phillips), the Detective Chief Superintendent from the original series who had risen to become chief constable. A number of other actors from the early days of the series also made guest appearances, but not as their original characters.
Cast
Further Information
Get more info on 'Z-cars'.
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