Z-Cars

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For the Nissan sports car, see Z-car

Z Cars
Opening title logo
Genre	Police procedural
Creator(s)	Troy Kennedy Martin Allan Prior
Starring	James Ellis Brian Blessed Stratford Johns Frank Windsor Jeremy Kemp Joseph Brady Colin Welland
Country of origin	UK
No. of episodes	667
Production
Running time	25 minutes & 45 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC
Original run	January 2, 1962 – September 20, 1978
Links
IMDb profile

Z-Cars (sometimes written as Z Cars, and always pronounced 'zed', never 'zee') was a British television drama series centred around the work of regular beat police officers in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby near 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. Due 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 (father of Steeleye Span's Maddy 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.

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.

1 Plot
2 Episodes
3 Trivia
4 Cast
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Plot

The 'Z-Cars' of the title was a reference to the patrol cars the police used at the time (often Ford Zodiacs and Ford Zephyrs), and 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 had 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 movies such as Flash Gordon (1980), Henry V (1989), Hamlet (1996) and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (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.

[edit] 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 half-hour episodes. It ran continuously until April 1971 then returned to a regular season pattern of 50-minute episodes for its final years.

The original series was notable for being one of the very last British television dramas to be screened live on a regular basis — 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.

As with many British television programmes of the era, Z-Cars is incomplete in the archives - 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. Nevertheless, around half of the total number of episodes survive: 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 could not 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).

The spin-off, Softly, Softly focussed on the activities of the regional crime squad, and ran until 1969, when it was again revised and became Softly, Softly: Taskforce, 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 lead 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 Superintendant 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.

[edit] Trivia

The Z-Cars theme tune, arranged by Fritz Spiegl from the traditional folk song Johnny Todd, was adopted by fans of the football club Everton, who are based in Liverpool near to where the programme supposedly took place. (There is a pub in the Westvale area of the real Kirkby named "The Johnny Todd"). To this day, the theme tune is still played as the team come out onto the pitch at the beginning of all their home matches. Watford F.C. are also known to play the theme when the players enter the field.[1]

While the series was running, "Z-car" was often used to mean "police car" in newspaper headlines, because it typeset into less space.