Name game that meant a top copper nearly came a cropper
With London on the brink of mass riots in a broiling heatwave, and drug gangs roaming hyde Park and Mayfair with zombieshredder knives, the top brass of the Met have one key priority.
What are they going to call the police operation? it has to be catchy, it has to be unique, and it deserves a twist of matey wit. Commander Ben- Julian ‘ B. J.’ harrington was scratching his head in The Met: Policing London (BBC1) — this law-and-order lark is harder than it looks.
B.J.’s favourite suggestion was ‘Operation San Marino’, because it made him think of ‘a country England can actually beat at football’. then an underling diffidently pointed out that San Marino is also a district of Los Angeles that was almost burned to the ground during the Nineties riots.
B.J. turned white. imagine if civil unrest turned the capital into a war zone and he’d chosen the wrong name for the whole business. the Press would humiliate him. his career could be over.
in a moment of quick-thinking brilliance he pulled another name out of the air, and Operation SanMar commenced.
he was duly rewarded: B.J. is now acting Deputy Chief Constable for Essex. Crisis averted.
Obviously, there were still youths with serrated machetes, bug-eyed on drugs and terrorising the streets, but you can’t expect senior Met officers to do much about that. they are not miracle workers.
this documentary failed to distinguish between the courageous and thankless work of the coppers on the frontline and the careerist politicians at the uppermost levels. As far as the producers were concerned, they were all marvellous.
it’s a pity they couldn’t persuade some of the PCs to speak off the record about their frustrations, because then viewers might have heard a very different story.
there was one moment of hope in the whole hour, a flash of old-fashioned policing: after CCtV had tracked a masked knifeman through the crowds on the Edgware Road, he slipped off his disguise — and a veteran officer recognised him. Months of work watching the South London gang ringleaders paid off.
this wasn’t public relations policing. it simply made the city’s streets a fraction safer. But in the East End, on the Romford Road where hordes of Romanian prostitutes now ply their trade, the police are powerless.
Sgt Vicky Kneale admitted it was pointless to arrest the girls — they would just go back on the streets to pay their fines.
A raid on a three-bedroom family home, turned into a dingy brothel with 24 cubicles for sex, exposed how little the law can do. the girls all claimed the punters were their boyfriends. Squalid is too kind a word for it.
A different kind of lawlessness was in the spotlight for White Gold (BBC2), a Yuppie sitcom about three double- glazing salesmen making loadsamoney in the Eighties. Ed Westwick starred as a smarmy git with a silver tongue. James Buckley and Joe thomas from the inbetweeners were his sidekicks.
the script was mannered and dirty-mouthed, though the lines came so fast that there were bound to be some laughs. But Westwick’s character Vincent Swan, a toerag who parks his flash motor on double yellow lines with a disabled badge, is too slimy to be a likeable rogue.
this territory was covered far more cleverly during the thatcher years by harry Enfield, and David Jason, of course, in Only Fools And horses.
this isn’t a complete failure, but it’s crude and blunt instead of polished and sharp.