David Ellison as the bitter Sergeant Joseph Beck

The other day I watched a bit of Juliet Bravo again as it was on the Drama channel... for now you can watch all the old rubbish that used to be on telly on Freeview endlessly on a loop…

Following the election of Britain’s first female Prime Minister in 1979 it was felt by those in power that there needed to be more birds on the telly.  Therefore the well meaning BBC created Juliet Bravo as an antidote to the Sweeney.  Instead of John Thaw telling villains to “shut it!” every week on ITV we had Stephanie Turner attempting to sympathise with the villains … but not too much.  

The criminals on Juliet Bravo were a set of strangely sympathetic failures.  Business men who drink too much and cause car crashes, men who’ve been made redundant so go on a burglary spree, women who go bonkers ‘cus they can’t have babies, children who sniff glue, ex-cons who kept returning to the can … I’m not saying it was a little too worthy but…  There were never any big crimes or who-done-it mysteries it was all just one long series of tiny tragedies. 

Most episodes involve those brought to book by JB mocking JB and her minions as not “real people” but people who have to “dress up in funny clothes” or as people who don’t have real lives because they can’t be sacked.  Pretty much the same criticisms anyone can make of the “pigs” today.  “What a job you have,” states one, “people’s mucky lives.”  I have to say I’ve always wondered who actually wants to be a policeman. ...sorry woman.  It is as if they are a Greek Chorus mocking the artificial nature of the drama its self and the way all the plots are concluded inside 50 minutes.  Indeed it seems the job of the regular cast is to be ridiculed in a new way each week by a series of different guest artists…  Occasionally of course there’s an overbearing superior just to let us know that JB has hit the glass ceiling.

One always wonders with police series how real they are.  I cannot answer.  The only time I’ve ever been inside a police station was when I was accidentally interviewed for an analytics job.  I hadn’t applied for this job I was mysteriously invited by accident or mistake (I suspect the latter) so felt I had to go to the interview out of sheer nosiness.  After passing through lots of security and doing some computer tests I ended up being asked by a man in a suit how I would fancy working “on a consultancy basis”.  

Being unemployed at the time I responded “Well, I’m free at the moment.”  The interviewer laughed heartily.  I think this was the wrong answer ...then again…  Perhaps they googled me and MI5 advised them that employing someone dumb enough to put his unfiltered experiences on the internet would be the worst security personnel decision in the history of crime solving.

Anyway returning from the real world to Juliet Bravo’s world… the most interesting characters in the series were the comedy double act of miserable Sergeant Joseph Beck and cynical Sergeant George Parrish who carry most of the expositional dialogue.  It wasn’t that much of a problem then when Stephanie Turner decided to jack in the lead role … she was promptly replaced by Anna Carteret playing another police Inspector who’s name I can’t remember.  However, for some reason the undoubted star of this series was David Ellison as the bitter Sergeant Joseph Beck.  The kind of man who’s almost a professional success but yet so bitter and emotionally closed off he makes remarks like “I was married at one time, ma’am, yes”.  Of course everyone’s too embarrassed to ask him to fill us in further so that's all we ever know... 

I seem to remember Juliet Bravo ends with someone phoning 101 and being kept on hold forever.