The Thin Blue Line

Rudolph Walker
c/o Garry Knight

Wandering over BBC Iplayer I recently came across Ben Elton’s 90s Police comedy “The Thin Blue Line” which suffered at the time from not being Blackadder 5 but looking at it now it stands up really well.  It chronicles the life of Inspector Raymond Fowler (Rowan Atkinson) and his long suffering girlfriend Sergeant Patricia Dawkins (Serena Evans).  

Fowler is a man who revels in the boring and procedural.  His nemesis is the CID division’s inspector Grim (David Haig) who in a parody of the Bill/Sweeney shouties is given lots of lines about having his arse on the line and not needed anything up it.  Grim is, of course, blissfully unaware of the proctorial nature of these puns in a Mrs Slocombe’s pussy way.

Elton said he based it to an extend on Dad's Army and...

Mirroring the church hall scenes of Dad’s Army there is usually a weekly office scene in which Fowler explains to his minions his latest directive/scheme of the week to derision and misunderstandings from his underlings.  These include Rudolph Walker (from “Love They Neighbour”) who plays the older never-gone-anywhere-PC in a philosophical way relating most incidents to something that happened in his Trinidadian childhood, Mina Anwar (who was in the “Sarah Jane Adventures” - think she Rani's mother) as the high flying PC Habib – Atkinson’s pronunciation of which is most amusing – and a very young James Dreyfus in his career defining role as the thick, camp and straight Constable Goody  … I wondered what had happened to Mr Dreyfus …it turns out that he was severely wounded in a TERF war.  But back in 1990…

Fowler is a partial parody of Dixon on Dock Green and indeed series 2 episodes start with him breaking the 4^th wall and talking directly to camera usually signing off with a pun about dietary fibre.  It has to be said that there are so many bowel and anus jokes in this series one has to start wondering if Mr Elton has an intestinal condition.  

Fowler’s romance for the old days of policing made me nostalgic for this past too.  I mean, this series is so old that there actually are police stations… The last time Croydon Police Station was seen it was concealed behind wooden hoardings in one of the Council’s many redevelopment schemes.  I asked our local PC whether it was still open and he said it is but I can’t see an entrance.  Perhaps there’s a secret entrance that can only be opened by a Masonic handshake...  Since my local PC knocked on the door once and I wouldn't invite him in for tea he now emails me weekly newsletters by email detailing the theft of catalytic converters, minor burglaries and prosecutions of middle class people for possession of miniscule amounts of drugs in the hope we grass on somebody … but...

Anyway,  in amongst the slapstick and hemorrhoid jokes this series does pick up a few serious issues and run with them.  Lucy Robinson is memorable as Dame Christabel Wickham QC Gasforth’s Thatcherite Mayoress and Sergeant Dawkins rival for Fowler’s affections who promises international investors to drive down wages and worker’s rights.  And “The Green Eyed Monster” about the infiltration of local environmental activists by MI5 agents sent to have relationships with the women though played as farce is remarkably topical … except of course these days those dubious duties have been given over to the police themselves.  These days Sergeant Dawkins could have got a financial settlement estimated at £3 million…

Rudolph Walker gives possibly some of the best turns in this comedy and I wondered what had happened to him.  Seems he has set up some kind of acting foundation…

https://rudolphwalkerfoundation.com/

Stephen Fry also pops up as a perverted mountaineer …and it also contains one of my favourite Elton/Atkinson jokes - the one about reflexology ... but I'm not going to tell it.  Watch it.