Classic portrayal of a British bobby; REWINDProof telly isn't as good as it was Dixon of Dock Green

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), August 9, 2008

BEFORE Morse and the Sweeney, the great British bobby was well presented on the box in the form of Pc George Dixon.

For more than 20 years he made the public feel secure knowing that a copper like George was out there, on screen and in a successful radio series.

Despite being a drama, it was originally produced by the BBC's light entertainment department. But crime in the late 50s was no laughing matter and Dixon became established as a guardian of all things good about British life.

The main character, police constable George, was played by Jack Warner, an old-style British bobby.

The character had first appeared in a 1950 British film, The Blue Lamp, in which he was shot and killed by a criminal played by a young Dirk Bogarde.

However, it was decided to bring him back to life for the television series, written by Ted Willis.

Each episode started with Dixon speaking directly to the camera - a real innovation and much copied in later years.

He was voted the most trustworthy character in a TV poll and always began with a salute and the comfortable greeting of 'Evening all!' which has lived on in Britain as a jocular greeting.

In similar fashion, episodes finished with a few words from Dixon, a moral prologue, often in the form of philosophy on the evils of crime.

It was parodied by Harry Enfield in his TV series decades later.

Dixon continued in the same role as in the film The Blue Lamp - a constable based at the fictitious Dock Green police station based somewhere in the East End of London.

The character of Andy Mitchell (played by Jimmy Hanley) - the young constable in the film - became a detective named Andy Crawford (played by Peter Byrne) in the CID at Dock Green, and he was married to Dixon's daughter Mary.

By the end of the series, Jack Warner was quite elderly, and George Dixon had been promoted to station Sergeant and given a desk job.

With the inevitable heart of gold, Dixon was a widower raising an only daughter Mary (Billie Whitelaw in the early episodes, later replaced by Jeanette Hutchinson). Other regular characters included Sergeant Flint (Arthur Rigby), Pc Andy Crawford (Peter Byrne) and Sergeant Grace Millard (Moira Mannon).

In the final series, made when Warner was 80, Dixon had retired from the police.

In 2005, the series was revived for BBC radio, with David Calder as George Dixon, David Tennant as Andy Crawford, and Charlie Brooks as Mary Dixon.

A second series followed in 2006, with Hamish Clark replacing Tennant due to the latter's Doctor Who filming commitments.

Altogether 307 episodes were made of the original TV version, at first running 30 minutes and later clocking in at 45 minutes.

And of course the early episodes were in black and white while the later ones were in colour.

The BBC scheduled Dixon in the prime family time slot of 6.30pm on Saturday night. At the time it started on air in 1955, the drama schedule of the BBC was mostly restricted to television plays so Dixon of Dock Green had little trouble in building and maintaining a large and very loyal audience.

In 1961, for example, the series was voted the second most popular programme on British television with an estimated audience of 13.85 million.

Even in 1965, after three years of the gritty and grimy procedural police work of Z Cars, the audience for Dixon still stood at 11.5 million.

At his funeral, Jack was given a police send off and they played the Dixon of Dock Green theme music.

Warner remains to this day the template of the most excellent British bobby.

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AUTHORITY FIGURE: Jack Warner as Sgt George Dixon