Target

'Target' is a deadly serious show, which may be why it's so very funny. A sort of Alan Partridge re-imagining of 'The Sweeney', 'Target' is set in Southampton, and stars ant eater featured Patrick Mower, who plays Inspector Steve Hackett. Hackett is the sort of man who never speaks when he can bellow, does all his own stunts (sometimes) and drives a flashy American car: the sort of maverick on the edge copper who one day they'll throw the book at but, for now, gets results. Crime is a disease - he's the Beechams. He's also desperate for a shag, but only has two hours off a week so is reduced to making dates he can't keep with witnesses or sniffing around old flames who had more than enough of him when they were going out.

A tiring, violent show (for the first series, anyway - things were toned down second time around thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse) 'Target' reminds me of something that would have appeared in boy's comics of the time like 'Action' and 'Fireball': full of shooters and villains and cars being driven into each other, but utterly one dimensional - an adolescent fantasy of blood and guts, pretty girls and shouting. Hackett dominates everything, which is just as well, as no-one though to write any other characters, so everyone else in the show is dull and interchangeable, just puppets for Hackett to yell at or nick, send out to get killed or ordered to the shops to get him a bar of chocolate. Much worse than that, however, is that Mower tries to live up to his inexplicable image as a sexy symbol by constantly walking around in his underpants, and once you've seen that, it stays with you and rakes at the inside of your eyeballs until you weep blood.

Who says men can't multi-task?

So - not much 'cop' (don't forgive the pun, I get away with far too much as it is) but not entirely without merit - it's certainly entertaining. I'd like to see the show remade, properly, as a comedy, using the same scripts and starring Matt Berry. That would be ace. Come on, BBC: GO! GO! GO!

New Scotland Yard

‘New Scotland Yard’ is a police procedural programme which ran on ITV from 1972 to 1974. It’s a programme that I can distinctly remember watching as a really quite small kid, perhaps because, although it seems fairly restrained now, there was an inventive and sadistic quality to the violence perpetrated – an element of the unusual that scored my squishy young brain. In the episode 'Shock Tactics', for instance, a man kills his wife by sneaking up behind her in a gorilla mask and literally scaring her to death. In other episodes, an ex-SS officers is stabbed with his ceremonial dagger, and a woman's corpse is found in a trunk in the bedsit she used to share with her retarded husband. I also remember an episode where a number of long dead bodies were found bricked up behind a wall, but I haven't tracked that one down yet.

The show stars the great, stone faced John Woodvine as the rose growing Detective Chief Superintendent John Kingdom and John Carlisle as his assistant / adversary, Detective Inspector Ward. Ward is a know all, whereas Kingdom knows all - which inevitably leads to an interesting dynamic (in later series, Ward has been busted down to Sergeant). They are called in to deal with the big cases – the murders and scandals – which Kingdom, after ascertaining the facts, usually solves using a blend of calm intelligence and adherence to routine. The crimes they investigate are varied, which makes the show unpredictable – and uneven - but, when it's good, it's great. 

Woodvine and Carlisle were replaced for the final series, which I haven’t seen, and the show was cancelled after that. In the end analysis, 'New Scotland Yard' was simply not action packed enough, and the leisurely pace was matched by a reflective, sometimes mournful tone, which wasn't what people wanted from their Saturday night telly.