Fri 4 Dec 2009
A TV Mini-Series Review by Geoff Bradley: LAW AND ORDER (BBC, 1978)
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[3] Comments
LAW AND ORDER. BBC, 4-part mini-series, 6 April through 27 April 1978. Peter Dean, Derek Martin, Deirdre Costello, Billy Cornelius, Alan Ford, Ken Campbell, Fred Haggerty. Screenplay: G. F. Newman. Director: Les Blair.
Not the long-running Dick Wolf series or one of its spin-offs, this was a British four-part series from 1978. Back then I had no video recorder, and I had a sort of method for screening tv programmes of not watching new ones but waiting to read reviews and then catching them on the repeats.
When this series aired there was such a furor of complaints that the series was, to the best of my knowledge, never repeated, leaving me to regret my selection methods.
Now thirty-one years later we have had a repeat on BBC 4, the BBC’s least watched digital channel.
The series was written by G.F. Newman, a man who has developed a reputation as an anti-establishment figure (and the man behind the more recent and upmarket Judge John Deed).
In the first story, “A Detective’s Tale” we meet London D.L Fred Pyle, a sly, mix-with-the-criminals type of detective, who is seen taking a sizable bribe from a major villain to look the other way. Pyle hears from an informant that Jack Lynn, a career criminal, is about to stage an armed robbery and makes it his job to catch him.
In the second episode, “A Villain’s Tale” the focus starts on Lynn as he sets up his armed robbery, however, soon, he suspects that the police are on to him and abandons the prospect. Meanwhile four other criminals stage an armed robbery and when three of them are caught, Pyle plants evidence that Lynn is the fourth man.
In the third episode, “A Brief’s Tale”, we follow the legal system, firstly Lynn’s solicitor, whom we see given secrets to the police for return favours, and then the barrister he employs. The barrister is more concerned with how much money he will make but does actually put on a spirited defence until the judge, outraged by the barrister implying police corruption, forbids him from pursuing that line of defence.
It is no surprise when the three guilty villains are found not guilty but Lynn, a career criminal but entirely innocent of this offence, is found guilty.
In the final part, “A Prisoner’s Tale”, we see Lynn, a proud and angry man, as he tries to resist the prison system but is forced to compliance through bent and violent prison guards, incompetent and uncaring officials, and the system. This is by far the bleakest of the four programmes — and that’s saying something — and it leaves one with a feeling of helplessness.
Of course it’s probable that the system is not as bad as Newman is making out, but it seems likely that some corruption of the kinds he indicates is inevitable. This is a powerful if depressing series, and I’m pleased that finally I have been given a second chance to see it.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Whilst I’m not naive enough to believe that there is no corruption in the system, I always felt that this series pushed things so far as to seem ridiculous. I read an article written by a retired, high ranking, police officer who felt that by constantly assuming the worst of all policemen, society would end up with the police force that it deserved. The system has made enormous strides in trying to reduce corruption in the Met, and it’s just a shame that no-one makes TV dramas about this.
December 5th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I’ve not seen the series, but now that I have a multi-region player, I’m tempted to. But there’s a wealth of other British TV that’s available only in Region 2 format that I think that I’ll gobble up first. This one sounds too dark and pessimistic to me. From Geoff’s review and what else I’ve read about it, it’s no surprise that it took so long to be repeated.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
To give the Met its due they tackled many of the scandals and the overall corruption fairly openly and in the public, and Bradstreet has a point about the dangers of always assuming the police are corrupt creating an atmosphere that itself creates more corruption.
That said the problem is endemic in police work from the biggest metropolis to the smallest burg, and likely always will be — in part thanks to the nature of the work and in part to human nature.
You can’t expose people constantly to the worst side of human nature, hand them a gun and the power of enforcement, and not expect a few flawed people to take advantage of it or fall victim to the temptations. After all the first police detective, Eugene Vidoq, began as a criminal.
John Gardner (the American one) once wrote about the dangers of what he called Dis-Pollyanna, a largely unearned cynical voice that indulges in a dark and biased view of the world simply in an attempt to seem cool or hip. Sounds as if this one may have a touch of that — rather like HBO’s Oz, a series that managed to become a parody of the problem it was supposed to be dealing with dramatically.
And it isn’t exactly a new problem. In twenty years on the air the American Law and Order has never once tackled the very real problem of prosecutorial over zealousness. All the CSI, Bones, and and other series currently on the air seldom tackle the real problem of incompetence in criminal science (here in Oklahoma one incompetent woman CSI put dozens of innocents in prison and perjured herself hundreds of times due to her poor work and the local M.E.’s office is in a crisis because of incompetence, budget, and corruption).
This one sounds too bleak and cynical for my taste. Think I’ll go back and read one of John Wainwright’s excellent books on the British police instead. His is a balanced and intelligent view of the problem tied to a compelling storyteller.