A gritty drama which follows the work of the police force in the fictional town of Newtown in the North of England.A gritty drama which follows the work of the police force in the fictional town of Newtown in the North of England.A gritty drama which follows the work of the police force in the fictional town of Newtown in the North of England.
- Awards
- 2 wins
Browse episodes
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe series suffered from the BBC's lack of a proper archiving policy until 1978. It was BBC policy before 1978 to wipe master tapes and reuse them for other programs, hence saving money and storage space. From a full tally of 799 episodes, 466 (broadcast between 1962 and 1974) are thought to no longer exist. Additionally, some colour videotaped editions only survive as monochrome film copies. The final four seasons, broadcast between September 1974 and September 1978, exist in their entirety.
- GoofsWhile taping 'moving vehicle' shots in studio, as technology was nowhere near as advanced as it is currently, it was so much simpler to use a 'stripped' version of the vehicles involved. Many such were missing their entire front ends and windscreens to facilitate both filming and sound recording. Continuous film was played on the screen behind, to give the impression that the vehicle was actually on the move during recording. Immediately after one such shot, actor Brian Blessed (PC 'Fancy' Smith) stepped out of the Z-car, and, having left his cap on the dashboard, reached in through the vacant windscreen space to retrieve it. Blessed himself spoke of this during a talk show some years later, but apparently neither the film crew nor the director noticed.
- Alternate versionsAlso available in a computer colorized version.
- ConnectionsEdited into Total Cops (2003)
Featured review
As an American who spent part of his childhood in England in the early 70's, I distinctly remember this show being a real snoozer, especially when compared to the much better American cop shows of the time (Hawaii Five O, Ironsides, etc.) For whatever reason, Brits just have never been much good at making crime and crime fighting interesting, whether on TV or the big screen, after all, I recently rented the DVD "Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels" and it sucked, mostly a lame rip-off of the far superior "Pulp Fiction". Maybe the problem is that we Americans just have much better criminals, more ruthless, greedy, and inventive and, as a result, American cops have to be much better as well to catch them, it sounds goofy but it's about the only theory I can think of that makes sense .......
- How many seasons does Z Cars have?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime50 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content