DVD : Law And Order (BBC, 1978)

Rating: - Sweet As!!
Although viewed as controversial at the time (1978)the controversy was simply an outcry from The Establishment to the superbly constructed tale of corruption, whether by Police, the Legal System or the people who keep it all going, The Criminal.

This still feels completely factual today and I don't think there has ever been, before or since, anything so cutting edge and factually accurate to be shown on television. This gritty drama, commisioned by the BBC, would not, today, be considered as appropriate material for television by the BBC PC brigade.

This feast of realism makes the Sweeney look like a toy town police game.

The acting is superb, bringing the characters to life in a way not seen on any television series today.The photography is outstandingly stunning bringing the London of 1978 into vivid focus, warts and all.

The film, in four parts, ask questions regarding the guilt or innocence of the main 'protagonist' Jack Lynn (Peter Dean). Was Lynn ever at the robbery? Do the police have any 'real' eveidence? Do the courts 'really' want justice? Do prisons change or simply reinforce criminal behaviour?

Questions, in reality, as relevant today as in 1978!

There is a 25 minute documentary on the making of Law and Order which includes a brief appearance of Professor Gary Slapper who is professor of Law at the Open University, which I found slightly weird.

Take a look at this film, you won't regret it. It is a masterpiece of televisual history and a really great, thought provoking, watch!!!

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Rating: - Landmark Drama
The controversy caused by this drama meant it was only shown once on British TV and this DVD release marks its 30th anniversary. The BBC was told by the government not to ever sell it abroad or show it again as it suggested that corruption was routine and endemic among the police and legal system.

While previous 'tough and realistic' police dramas, such as the Sweeney showed rule bending, they never showed police officers sharing in the proceeds of robberies, taking bribes and fitting villains up because they were "overdue."

Law and Order is about the wrongful arrest of a known villain Jack Lynn by Inspector Fred Pyle in the Metropolitan police's elite Flying Squad. The four parts show the story from the point of view of the villain, police officer, the lawyer and the story of Lynn's eventual incarceration.

Like HBO's the Wire this is not a goodies Vs baddies melodrama and gives a convincing dramatisation of the murky world of policing and justice in 70s London. The actors will be familiar to viewers of the popular British soap opera Eastenders with Derek Martin playing the slippery corrupt Inspector Pyle while Peter Dean plays Lynn giving a fantastic performance in the fourth chapter, the Prisoner's Tale, trying and failing to take on the system after wrongful (although some may say deserved) incarceration. The recently deceased and much missed Ken Campbell gives an untypically understated performance as Lynn's deal making lawyer Alex Galdwell.

This is a landmark series and should be seen by anyone with an interest in legal or police drama.