Bravo for TV’s new female police boss
We remember the show that changed the way we saw women coppers on TV 40 years ago
AWOMAN in charge of a male police force was a revolutionary idea back in 1980. Stephanie Turner turned up as the newly-promoted Inspector Jean Darblay to take charge of the police station in the fictional town of Hartley as Juliet Bravo launched on BBC 1 on August 30.
Creator Ian Kennedy Martin has recalled the early days of the BBC drama, saying: “‘I don’t know if I can write about a cop who’s a woman’ was a surprise response from some of the male writers – often they had written for Z Cars. I said they should write it using the name Barlow and we’d change that to our heroine Darblay later.”
Police drama The Gentle Touch starring Jill Gascoine had started on ITV a few months earlier. Stephanie had unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Detective Inspector Maggie Forbes on that but ended up joining the Force instead on Juliet Bravo.
The first episode was called
Shotgun and saw the new female police boss having to deal with a man who had taken his daughter at gunpoint. Actress Anna Carteret later took over the running of the police station as Kate Longton when Jean Darblay was promoted. The drama ran for 88 episodes over six series and the name Juliet Bravo came from the radio call sign based on the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Future Inspector Morse and Lewis actor Kevin Whately appeared in an early episode as PC Chris Evans, while
The Bill’s Eric Richard played Detective Sergeant Fournel. Other famous faces who popped up in Hartley included Call The Midwife’s Stephen McGann, Doctor Who actor Colin Baker and Men Behaving Badly’s Neil Morrissey.
Juliet Bravo attracted up to 17 million viewers before finally coming to an end before Christmas 1985 with an episode entitled Last Reason For Leaving which saw Kate dealing
with a spate of Christmas tree thefts.