ntil midnight Sunday (BST) the Archive goes TV Cops mad with interviews, reviews, features and some great guest bloggers.But before we kick off with a look at early British TV cops, Fabian of the Yard and Dixon of Dock Green, let me outline the Archive's loose definition of a TV Cop - we will include private eyes, amateur detectives and strange secret agent types, which is why you'll see articles about The Saint, The Avengers and The Persuaders alongside pieces on Kojak, Columbo and that armed bastard, Gene Hunt.
All of our guest bloggers have come up with the goods and I am proud to be able to present such a wealth of talent under the Archive's TV Cops banner - the highlight of the weekend will be an interview with serving police officer, Paul Bishop or Bish to his friends. Paul is a 32 year veteran of the LA Police Department and will be giving us a unique insight into all those TV cop shows. Bish has also kindly devoted his time to bish-bash out a couple of great guest blogs.
And so let's get the show on the road - we're armed, dangerous and we haven't had our breakfast.
NEXT FABIAN AND DIXON
4 comments:
Fabian! My, we're really going back some there -- before you were born, wasn't it? I remember watching this series, starring Bruce Seton, on a 9 inch B&W screen. From memory , the episodes were half-hours and ground-breaking for their time.
Indeed - Dixon was also sometime before my emergance into this world. I think Fabian was the first regular police series in the UK. It was also shown in the states as Patrol Car.
The main point about Fabian was that it was shot on film rather than broadcast (wow, how quaint!) from a studio. That was what I meant by "groundbreaking". Even as a kid, I could tell it was made for US/overseas consumption. Americanisms crept in and it had something of touristy approach to the stories' settings. Never seemed quite kitchen-sink enough to be the real Britain in which we lived, and presumably the real Inspector Fabian had operated. Much later, I remember Bob Fabian giving us a promotional quote to use on the covers of some of the last Sexton Blake stories published by Fleetway. He was still a "name" in the sixties, probably as a result of the TV series 10 years earlier.
Chap - remember in the sixties he was the guardian of the questions on 64,000 question. This was after he retired from the force. Quite a character!
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