That's a good point, ransax.
Actually, very little is said about police corruption on British TV, either. Although everyone in Britain knows it goes on, and that false confessions are extorted, etc, especially since the rash of vindications of people convicted of notorious murders and IRA bombings, who were proved not to have done it. (In America, of course, many would have been executed before their innocence was proven.)
The Bill has in recent years - say for about the past five years - GOT a bit more realistic, I find... or at least it was a couple of years ago, I've stopped following the show, I'm not so interested in TV since I really got into the Internet - because they showed things like policemen being tempted to get into corruption, and that Sergeant whateverhisnamewas, getting into hot water over it, and of course more affairs... THAT component seems to have gone up a bit, in British cop shows. I expect they were belatedly scrambling to keep up, with shows like NYPD Blue.
Yes, I'd say that American cop shows WERE unrealistic, nowadays, particularly, perhaps... they seem to have gone unrealistic, over there, in a "right-wing", rather than an "idealistic" kind of way, now, if you see what I mean, ransax.
The "model" in Britain has hitherto been for the "cosy cop show". I think this goes back right to the first one on British TV, Dixon of Dock Green, forty years ago and more. Even since the TV powers that be started commissioning more "realistic" cop shows (ie, ones actually based on police procedure) in the 1980s, such as Juliet Bravo and The Bill, the "basic attitude" has been that the cops are fair and decent, do a difficult job, etc, etc. I used to quite like Juliet Bravo: it had a woman police inspector in it or whatever (she was uniformed), and the shows were quite "grim", in that shabby way that some of our "gritty soaps" are, ie "Eastenders". The grinding shabbiness of tower-block land could take it out of you after a while. But I liked the character, in my teens. But although this show displayed social problems (one episode that REALLY stuck in my mind was when a guy was PROVED to have committed suicide because he'd recently lost his job, and "Juliet" (not the officer's name!) berated his employer SOUNDLY for it - now that was an anti-Thatcherite message!) it never showed the police being anything less than honest, if not perfect.
Anyway, THAT is the basic "idea" of British cop shows. Tea and biscuits; decency and fairness. Emotionally reserved but well-intentioned.
It's not a bad "idea". Pity it doesn't mesh up a bit more truly with real life!
I have recently read a lot of autobiographies by articulate working-class criminals, some of whom went on to be successful armed robbers. Eg, "A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun", by Noel "Razor" Smith.
Without exception they have stated that they were beaten and ill-treated by police officers during their youth, simply because they grew up poor on poor estates. The above author was in fact the subject of a frame-up attempt when he was aged about 11. Because he was intelligent enough to prove that the police were telling lies, the police persecuted him for ever after that, and virtually pushed him into a life of crime.
G:I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
H:..But will they come when you do call for them?
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frederickelliot
18 years ago
Blame the American TV channels for treating their viewers like idiots. Most Americans are fully capable of watching a comedy from another country, and appreciating it for what it is..'a foreign comedy' rather than demanding that it is immediately remade in America with American actors / actresses.
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