DIXON OF DOCK GREEN EPISODE GUIDE:
Part 1: Seasons 1 - 5
Part 2: Seasons 6 - 7
Part 3: Seasons 8 - 9
Part 4: Seasons 10 -11
Part 5: Seasons 12 -13
Part 6: Seasons 14 - 17
Part 7: Seasons 18 - 21
Part 8: Season 22



Made a Labour peer by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1963, Lord Ted Willis was a prolific creative force responsible for thirty-four stage plays, thirty-nine films and forty television series. He earned a place in the Guiness Book of Records as television's most prolific writer, and his most successful television production was spawned from the film The Blue Lamp, which featured a London policeman by the name of George Dixon.



Although Dixon was killed twenty-one minutes into the film, Willis could recognize the potential of utilizing this character in a television format, and in early 1955 he approached the BBC with a treatment for a six-part series entitled Dixon Of Dock Green.



Drawing upon research undertaken during the early stages of work on the film, Willis based the first six episodes on real-life events he had either witnessed or had recounted to him by serving police officers. Jack Warner, who had played Dixon in the cinematic version, was cast in the leading role as a kindly, tea-drinking officer who pounded the fictional Dock Green beat protecting the community.



The series, transmitted in the Summer of 1955, did not set the world on fire, but the BBC was suitably impressed enough to recommission the programme almost immediately. Dixon of Dock Green was something of a rare breed of police serial, in that it portrayed for the first time the home lives of serving officers as well as the daily grind at the local "nick". Yet even in 1955, critics raised eyebrows at the coy "cosiness" of the series, and the portrayal of crimes which were tame by contemporary comparison.



Nevertheless, the BBC proclaiming that audiences identified with the heart-warming character of Dixon and whole-heartedly believed in the "realistic" nature of the crimes portrayed forged onwards with the programme, commissioning two series in quick succession, both of increasing length. Thus, Ted Willis returned to pen further adventures for George Dixon (this time drawing on the reserves of two-hundred-and-fifty real-life policemen to pass on anecdotal tales from which he could write stories).



The programme remained firmly committed to its core characters, retaining the services of Warner, Peter Byrne (PC Andy Crawford) and Arthur Rigby (Desk Sergeant Flint), and building out their characters in conjunction with the creation of a wide array of supporting characters inside and beyond the station.

In a similar vein to Yorkshire Television's Heartbeat and its recurring character of Bill Maynard's Claude Greengrass, Dock Green had a resident tramp by the name of Duffy Clayton (Harold Scott) who was a relatively learned man who knew how to abuse the system and get away with it. He was often seen of the periphery of crimes, and became one of Willis' favourite characters (and a character he claimed that British audiences adored). The introduction of female Constables and Sergeants was quaintly greeted with disdain from their male counterparts (in the she-may-be-a-copper-but-she's-still-a-woman vein), and they were dispatched to deal with the feminine side of cases whilst the men got on with the real business of dog handling, escorting lost children home and the like.

Timidity was certainly prevalent in the early years, which drew criticism from the media and yet attracted audiences in droves (apparently seeking an other-worldly portrayal of non-violent crime and characters to warm the cockles). That is, until, Willis produced a script which opened a small window of opportunity for the series and its future direction. In 1959, Helmet On The Sideboard closed the fifth series with the dramatic killing of Sergeant Bob Penney during the execution of his duties. The BBC, Jack Warner and Willis himself were flooded with viewer correspondence protesting at his violent dispatch, and calling for his immediate return to the programme (as though viewers believed that Lazarus was alive and well and living in Dock Green). This window of opportunity, in which Dixon of Dock Green could emerge from its coy chrysalis and present the real world in its often unsavoury majesty, was never fully explored until Ted Willis and long-term producer Douglas Moodie severed their connections with the programme, enabling a fresh crew to remain loyal to the original premise whilst exploring new, harder-edged themes and storylines which more adequately reflected the changing nature of society as a whole.

This in part succeeded, and yet critics could never rid themselves of the feeling that the programme was becoming "well passed it's sell-by date", so to speak. Audiences were still attracted to a television series which did not contain bad language, contained moderate (and often unseen violence) and delivered moral sermons to the community, but the programme (which would, during the course of its staggering twenty-two-year run, stave off stiff competition from Z Cars, Softly, Softly, Softly, Softly: Task Force, Barlow and Barlow At Large) had become so firmly entrenched in its own fictional state of reality that desperate attempts to make the content a little harder, and drawing the emphasis away from the officer's personal lives (and the reassuringly quaint and cosy atmosphere that engendered), failed to either improve ratings or content.

The series ultimately became a product of its time catering to a generation of viewers, and this sustained the programme across twenty-two years, culminating in its gradual decline and eventual decimation at the hands of ITV's brash new series, The Sweeney (which was, like Dock Green in 1955, a radical change in police storytelling which would influence all which came thereafter). With Warner aged seventy-five when the series came to a close (the programme effectively became less about George Dixon and more about the supporting officers when the character was promoted to Desk Sergeant in the early 1960s so as to give Warner the opportunity to rest), Ted Willis' programme had broken all television records (the series is still, in 2004, the longest-running police procedural serial on television, though Geoff McQueen's The Bill will equal that record in 2005) and had proven a safe and reliable mode of entertainment for the British public.

When Warner died five years after the series had ended, the public affection and esteem in which he was held (in fact Dixon of Dock Green was a series itself which reflected a bygone era in which police officers were held in great esteem by a grateful public who recognized it was a thankless profession) was never more evident that when his coffin was borne by police officers from Paddington Green whilst the signature tune to the series (entitled An Ordinary Cooper) was played over a public address system. Without Dixon Of Dock Green, programmes such as Z Cars, The Sweeney, The Gentle Touch and The Bill would never have reached our screens.

It was (and is) the eldest statesman of police serials, and whilst its content may have been unrealistic by contemporary standards, its portrayal of an other-worldly, comforting and cosy environment where crime was never as violent as it is today (in a similar vein to Heartbeat), and the quality of its content and performances (particularly its guest performances, which featured a wide array of actors such as Sean Connery and Michael Caine in its supporting cast) never waivered (unlike ITV's The Bill, which has collapsed into a soap opera and viewers are abandoning the series in droves). The programme was successful exported around the world, becoming particularly popular in Australia. It was never commercially exploited (perhaps owing to the live recording of early seasons), and yet the remainder of material held in the BBC archives has the potential to be released to the British public so that what is now fondly regarded as a British institution can once again be enjoyed.