Beyond Dixon of Dock Green: early British police series

Based on original archive research, this book traces the emergence of a distinctly British form of TV entertainment, the early BBC uniform police series.

Challenging the commonly held assumption that the genre began with the 1955 series Dixon of Dock Green whose eponymous hero had featured in the earlier, 1950 film, The Blue Lamp, Susan Sydney-Smith suggests that in fact these series were shaped by television's own negotiation of its social function from the relaying if news to the replaying of stories.

Arguing that the police drama developed out of the BBC Documentary Department's earlier live studio crime reconstructions, she also shows how the genre mapped new social and regional geographies, from Dixon's 'Metropolitan' policeman to the gritty northern realism of Z Cars.