Z CARS

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Joe Cushnan remembers Z-Cars or Z Cars (pronounced “Zed Cars” for our US readers), a legendary British TV police series about the work of mobile uniformed police and CID detectives in the fictional town of Newtown, near Liverpool...

Brian Blessed as PC Fancy Smith takes a shocking message over the radio: “What’s that you say? Gordon’s alive?” Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor as Barlow and Watt

The TV series Z Cars launched in 1962 and ended in 1978, chalking up 801 episodes and earning its reputation as one of the grittiest British police dramas of all time. The show became famous for realistic crime stories and characters based in Merseyside. The TV location was called Newtown, based on the real Liverpool town of Kirkby.

This was brave television on at least two fronts. Firstly, it was unusual for small screen productions to be based outside the south of England. Secondly, this was rough, tough drama that was the antithesis of the BBC hit, Dixon of Dock Green, a calmer, cosier police show that had Jack Warner’s George Dixon reassuring viewers at the end of each episode that the world was not all bad. His final words, with a nod and a smile, were always “Goodnight, all.”

Z Cars co-creator Troy Kennedy Martin was bedridden with mumps in the late 1950s. To relieve his boredom, he listened in to police radio messages. Gradually, he formed the idea for a television series based mainly on routine police work, with the emphasis on mobile uniformed coppers. It was always intended to be a hard-hitting, no-nonsense, raw, often violent show that tried to reflect working-class life. Initially the idea was a gamble because television producers were cautious about upsetting the real police and a good percentage of viewers who supported the work of officers. Kennedy Martin worked with writer Allan Prior to develop the series and the mix of character types.