TV COPS WEEKEND - Guest Ian Parnham

A few words in your shell-like, pal, about Gene Hunt

“They reckon you’ve got concussion, but personally I couldn’t give a tart’s furry cup if half your brains are falling out. Don’t ever waltz into my kingdom playing king of the jungle. I’m Gene Hunt, your DCI and it’s 1973, nearly dinner time. I’m having hoops.” That was how the greatest 50s tv cop in a show made in the 00s about the 70s and 80s introduced himself. But more on that confusion later.

Gene Hunt appeared in Life on Mars, a British cop show that ran for 16 episodes in 2006-07 followed by a spin-off show Ashes to Ashes that ran for 24 episodes in 2008-10. The shows used the simple and yet bold idea of a time-travelling cop and were a testament to both the BBC’s courage in filming an original idea and the unintentional benefit that results from tv companies’ reticence to experiment. The scripts languished in development hell for years and at one stage Channel 4 almost made them into a sitcom vehicle for Neil Morrissey. Somehow I can’t see Tony from Men Behaving Badly delivering the assessment of Gene as an overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding in a way that would have made it sound like a bad thing. But the long gestation period let the writers work out what the show was about and so unlike many shows that have a flawed pilot followed by a first season that irons out the format, Mars hit the ground running.

The idea was that Sam Tyler (named for Rose Tyler from Dr Who and I presume Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap) is a modern day cop who relies on techniques such as offender profiling and forensics. He respects the criminal’s human rights and he keeps meticulous notes, but he’s also dull enough to be a cop on one of those CSI shows. One day he gets seriously hurt in a car accident and he falls into a coma. When he awakes he finds he’s now living in 1973 and he’s the new man in Gene Hunt’s department.

For coppers 1973 was a simpler time when the murder scene was “the place where we found the body” and careful forensic examination involved rushing the fingerprint analysis through in two weeks. So Gene uses a simpler technique than Sam used for solving crimes in that he thinks with his heart rather than with his head. When a crime is committed Gene will dash round in his fast car to the nearest warehouse where bad guys are holed up. He’ll give them a kicking and then drag whoever he fancies for the crime back to the cop station to beat a confession out of them. Then he’ll find enough evidence in his filing cabinet filled with confiscated stolen goods to satisfy a sympathetic judge, letting him leave work at Beer O’Clock. Then it’s down to the pub for a game of darts, eighteen pints and the equivalent of the North Sea in whisky, a curry and then home to the missus ready to do it all over again the next day. And the best thing is, the blagger he bangs to rights is always the one who did it because Gene is always right. Gene is Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart all rolled into one. He’s the sheriff of the Wild West frontier town of... Manchester and that means he needs only a steely gaze, big fists, and a catchphrase of, “You are surrounded by armed bastards.”

This technique represented everything that a great, soft, sissy, girlie, nancy, French, bender, Man United supporting poof like Sam hated and so a classic buddy-buddy, chalk-and-cheese approach to the cop show format was born. Every week Sam would try to catch the bad guys using his quiche-eating, new man, touchy-feely approach while Gene would kick the stuffing out of anyone who got in his way. But every week they’d pull together just enough to lock the bad guys away and bit by bit Sam learned to trust his own instincts while Gene learnt to appreciate Sam’s methodology, even if he could never admit it.

It’s often claimed that Gene Hunt’s character came from Jack Regan, the cop in 70s show The Sweeney, and although when I first heard that it sounded right, in retrospect it doesn’t explain Gene particularly well. In my nostalgic mind, having not seen it for 30 years, The Sweeney was a gritty show that provided an antidote to the cosy 70s US imports. But having seen it again recently it was in reality less gritty than Murder, She Wrote. The more informative inspiration for Gene was Brian Clough, a 70s football manager who was famed for saying things like, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, young man, but then again I wasn’t on that job.” Philip Glenister, the actor who played Gene, often drags out the story that when researching the role he came across a video of Brian Clough being interviewed. The interviewer asked Brian what he did when a player disagreed with him and Brian replied, “We talk about it for twenty minutes and then we decide I was right.” Philip realized this was Gene’s attitude and when he mentioned it to the writers, they said that’s what they had in mind when they created him. So there it was: Gene Hunt was Brian Clough.

So for the first season Gene was a scruffy, violent force of nature, a cop who accepted no boundaries and who was as non-pc as you could get away with on British tv. He became a classic anti-hero. He accepted bribes from gangsters, was corrupt by the modern definition of the word, and his dancing in episode 3 was the worst example of Dad-dancing ever filmed. Not surprisingly the British public took him to their hearts, and in some ways it was downhill from there.

For the second season of Mars the writers faced a problem. Gene’s behaviour was supposed to appal viewers while Sam’s ethical approach was supposed to cheer them. They were supposed to want Sam’s devotion to means to defeat Gene’s belief that the end justified the means. But the reaction was the opposite one. Viewers liked seeing Gene clearing the streets of scum with his big boots and fists, and they liked seeing Sam learning to appreciate Gene’s approach. This was all summed up by the lazy line that was repeatedly trotted out that if only we had more coppers on the beat like Gene Hunt the streets would be safer.

To my mind the viewers’ reaction demonstrated the show’s strength, because for anyone interested in writing technique Mars used the most rigid third person single point of view narrative I think any tv show has ever attempted. Sam Tyler was in every scene of every episode (except for the one episode that deliberately broke the format) and so the viewers only saw what Sam saw, making him the hero in every way. But even though everyone liked hero Sam, they liked anti-hero Gene more. So the problem for season 2 was how to maintain that popularity. The answer was to turn bad-boy anti-hero Gene into good-guy hero Gene. He still kicked down doors and banged heads. But his rough edges were smoothed down and he became a joker with lots of, “This investigation’s going at the speed of a spastic in a magnet factory.” and, “He’s got more fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course.”

Even without Gene becoming increasingly comic, the show faced a greater problem with Sam Tyler, who was played by the excellent John Simm, an actor who didn’t want to be typecast. It’s assumed he refused to do more than two seasons of a show that had such a neat format it felt as if it could run for years. The solution was to ditch Sam and rebrand the show as Ashes to Ashes. This show moved the time-frame on to 1981, changed the location to London, and replaced Sam with Alex Drake, another present day cop who had fallen into a coma and ended up in Gene’s world. This show made more of the central mystery of why the cops were going back in time, while Gene morphed again into being an even nicer hero. And in deciding how to make Gene more appealing the writers made the sensible but unfortunate decision of seeing what the fans thought about him.

As anyone who has ever dipped a toe into cult fandom knows, the Internet world of fanfic and forums can be impenetrable to outsiders. But one surprising thing was certain about the cult of Gene Hunt: a particular demographic of womankind that was still young enough to moisten their gussets at the thought of Gene’s massive member liked Gene. Or to be more precise they liked the actor who played Gene... I should say here that I’m filling this article with Gene Hunt quotes and I do know that not all Gene Hunt fans are as cranky as a bird riding the cotton pony.

Anyhow, this demographic thought Gene was sex on legs. As a bloke I couldn’t see the appeal of a face with more pock marks than the moon, the beer belly, the sweat and nicotine stains, the sexist, racist, and several other ists banter, but there it was. Gene Hunt was officially a sex symbol and the show had to decide what to do about it. The answer was to accept it and give the viewers what they wanted. So Gene was spruced up and togged out in poncy designer gear, making him even more desirable to the tarts who wanted to wiggle their arses at him and fill his days with glimpses of the depths of their depraved minds. He still had the one-liners such as, “How many birds does it take to change a light-bulb? Two. One to run around shouting what do I do, what do I do and the other to shag the electrician.” But the airbrushed, wine-drinking, southern toss-pot Gene was a shadow of the violent sociopath of two years’ earlier. In an odd way this made some sense as the 70s were a time when people trusted the police and by the 80s they didn’t. So it was no longer possible for coppers to beat up bad guys without someone bleating about their rights, but either way, Gene became a parody of himself.

Some Mars fans were as unhappy as a very small nun on a penguin shoot with the fairy Ashes Gene. And conversely some Ashes fans were as excited as Liberace’s dick when he’s looking at a naked bird with the not-a-fairy Mars Gene. But those who stuck with him then faced a change that was even harder to swallow than Gene’s impressive manhood. The inevitable idea hit the screen with all the force of a bruise free groin slap that as the main leads were now a bloke and a bird, Gene would want to stamp Alex’s arse. Well, I say hard to accept because many a girlie heart beat faster when Gene barked at Alex, “Blimey, if that skirt was hitched any higher I could see what you had for breakfast.” So the hideous Galex was born, the love that ought not to have spoken its name between Gene and Alex.

For me this bemusing aspect of Gene’s character was as false as a tranny’s fanny, so I’ll say no more about it. But luckily the actor also got cheesed off with his character being made into a joke as did the writers. So rather than let Gene’s credibility go down faster than a five pound hooker on a Saturday night things improved and the first season of Ashes was Gene’s low point. From there on he was largely changed back to his earlier character, letting him regain most of his macho posturing and integrity. The violence returned, we learned of his dark side, and he even joined the masons. But we also saw other facets of his character as we got to understand how he operated. To outsiders he was a corrupt, abusive thug. But to his team he was the Guv, a fiercely loyal man whose principal that the buck stopped with him meant he covered up his team’s failings and urged them to better themselves.

Throughout the final two seasons Gene regained his authority as a stalwart cop who made his city a place safe for his mum to walk around in. He had more principles than when he started, but he always remained the sheriff who was a deputy to the law and so he earned the right to be a great fictional tv cop. And if you’re reading this having not seen the ending and you don’t want to know it, don’t read on. Ultimately the show raised Gene to mythic status and made him impervious to armchair critics such as myself when the final episode revealed that Gene had been a fictional tv cop all along. The real Gene was a copper in the 50s who died and went to a place where dead coppers go to sort themselves out. He created a fictional Gene who lived a fantasy copper’s life that never could have been but should have. So Gene was a fiction within a fiction whose excesses and failings can be explained away because they were a fiction that was never meant to be taken seriously in the first place. And to my mind that makes Gene Hunt bulletproof as a fictional tv cop because unlike other fictional tv cops he really was a work of fiction. End of.

I suppose I can’t finish Gene Hunt’s story without giving the British Gene a chance to say what he thought about Harvey Keitel, who played him in the US version of Life on Mars. So to paraphrase: “I reckon someone should paint Harvey’s balls the colour of hazelnuts and inform a pack of squirrels that winter’s coming.”

Ian has reviewed each episode of the recently completed Ashes to Ashes season three over at his own blog, The Culbin Trail