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emotionally retarded yuppie exec Gus Hedges, a typically one note role in the hands of virtually any other actor, to Dave Charnley, the rough edged lad about town played perfectly by Neil Pearson and Jeff Rawles painfully poignant yet hilarious creation George Dent.  

DtDD gave sitcoms the currency of a late night talk show monologue, a feat deftly pulled off by the creative duo of Andy Hamilton and Gus Jenkin. Not surprisingly DtDD has walked off with all manner of awards and even had a stint alongside AbFAb on Comedy Central but, never-the-less, Drop the Dead Donkey sites are thin on the web.

 Dixon of Dock Green

In 1949 Ealing studios released a crime drama with a twist, the sleuth was not an eccentric Victorian or hard-boiled private eye but Policeman Plod, the average Bobby on the beat. The Blue Lamp featured Jack Warner as Police Constable George Dixon on the trail of a thief, Dirk Bogarde. The Blue Lamp eschewed sophisticated twists and turns to portray a semi-documentary version of the life of a street level cop in post-war Britain. Despite an unhappy ending in the film PC Dixon was yet to play an important role in the history of British Television.

 In 1955 the BBC premiered Dixon of Dock Green with Warner reprising his role as the good P.C. for more than 20 years and nearly five hundred episodes. Dixon of Dock Green established a genre that continues to this day in the form of such series as The Bill and virtually every British crime drama of the last 40 years owes some debt to this classic series.   

QED

Sam Waterston is one of America’s premier actors, on television or off, his work in I’ll Fly Away, the Mini-series Lincoln and his work in the long running crime double header Law and Order but few remember his turn as Quentin E. Deverill Edwardian professor and private criminal investigator. I had nearly forgotten about this series when a reader e-mailed me for any information I might have on it. I remembered it airing sporadically when I was in high school and being terribly disappointed when it was axed, I had forgotten the rich English flavor of the series and now I can’t wait to catch it again sometime. It may have been an American series, or a co-production, I’n not certain, but it was directed by Brit film and telly vet Roy Ward Baker (The Saint, Department S, Persuaders, Quatermass) and produced by John Hawkesworth (Upstairs Downstairs, Dutchess of Duke

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