Who Didn’t Appear in Z-Cars

Back in 1962, Dixon of Dock Green had been a regular staple police programme on Saturday night television for nine years. In it PC George Dixon, played by Jack Warner portrayed the archetypal local bobby. But the series was criticised for being too cosy, predictable, and unrealistic. Then along came a new police drama with gritty realistic stories that changed all that, a BBC series that ran for 801 episodes, Z-Cars.

The series was located in the fictional town of Newtown based on Kirkby in Lancashire (later Merseyside), and the name Z-Cars relates to an imaginary Z Division of the local constabulary. The two patrol cars that featured in the programme were Z Victor 1 and Z Victor 2 and their call sign into the control centre was ‘Z Victor 1 (or 2) to BD’, BD being the code in Lancashire for the radio controller.

The series was not named after the Ford Zephyr cars used in the programme, though the Zephyr was used as a standard patrol car by the Lancashire Constabulary.

The theme tune to Z Cars was based on an old Liverpool sea shanty, Johnny Todd, which you can listen to here. . Compare this with the theme to the TV programme here  The theme was later adopted by Everton Football Club as its official anthem.

Of the 801 episodes that were broadcast between January 1962 and September 1978, only about 40% of them have survived. The original series was one of the last British television dramas to be screened as a live production. The episodes up to 1970 were made in black and white. There is more information about the series here.

When the first run ended in 1965, two of the detectives Det Chief Insp Barlow, played by Stratford Johns, and Det Sgt Watt, played by Frank Windsor, were spun into a separate series Softly, Softly.

But the most remarkable fact about the series was the number of actors that appeared in the series. It became a right of passage for budding actors, many of whom became household names and well-known actors. Around 1,400 actors appeared over the 16 years that the series was broadcast (there were 1467 characters in total).

Here are the names of some of the actors, together with photos of a few of them that you may recognise.

More than 100 Episodes (13 actors)

25 to 99 Episodes (29 actors)

24 to 10 Episodes (12 actors)

Five to Nine Episodes (25 actors)

Three or Four Episodes (46 actors)

Two Episodes (62 actors)

One Episode (111 actors)

Going through these names one thing stands out, that there are no black actors and only two Asian actors, Saeed Jaffrey and Zia Mohyeddin. The gritty realism of life in a northern city that Z-cars brought to British viewers was obviously not reflected in the casting, even allowing for police forces having few people from ethnic minorities within their ranks in the 60s and 70s.