Dixon of Dock Green: "It's not jolly – in fact it's unremittingly grim"

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Dixon of Dock Green does not deserve its reputation for cosiness. I wrote to that effect three years ago, but Tim Dowling was there long before me.

Here he is choosing a box set of the police drama back in 2012:

The stories are as gritty as anything you would find in The Bill, and happy outcomes are rare. In the little monologues that top and tail each programme, Dixon is likely to tell you the suspect was never convicted due to a lack of evidence, or that a wife-beater escaped punishment because the police were powerless to intervene. 

It's not jolly – in fact it's unremittingly grim. Bodies turn up in slag heaps. Depressed coppers kill themselves, and no one dares say so. "The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure," says Dixon, "and none of us would quarrel with that."