Cops in Hove, by Jove
MAKING a surprise return to our screens tonight is NIGHT COPPERS (C4, 10pm), the fly-onthe-wall series about Brighton’s police. I say “surprise” not because it isn’t a perfectly decent show but because it’s always relied for its plausibility on us believing, as viewers, that the city of Brighton and Hove actually has any police officers.
I’ve lived here most of my life and, believe me, I’m far from convinced. I’ve come to think of Brighton Police as most likely a myth, like the Loch Ness Monster, the Northern Lights and dolphins.
Whenever I’ve needed to call them in a moment of genuine crisis – a worrying disturbance in our street being one, a very real threat to the safety of me and my family being another (I could give you further examples but dredging up these memories isn’t good for my blood pressure) – the response has always been the same. Namely: “We’re very busy at the moment.” Indeed, so consistently frustrating have been these exchanges that I’ve had occasion to wonder if, rather than having dialled 999, I’ve accidentally phoned the doctor’s surgery and spent the last five minutes speaking to one of its receptionists.
Still, the TV camera cannot lie, can it?
Well, OK, it can, and increasingly does, but on this kind of show it tends not to. So unless the people on Night Coppers are all actors, I can only assume I’ve been unlucky, nothing more.
There clearly are genuine officers patrolling the streets in “this hedonistic seaside resort” (not my own description, you won’t be surprised to learn).
It’s just that, when it comes to “allocation of resources”, they have to focus on where the bulk of the trouble is likely to be.
Which isn’t out here, on its quieter fringes.
Still, their loss.We have a really lovely artisan bakery they’re missing out on.
What tonight’s episode does illustrate, mind you, is that patrolling a city centre doesn’t always mean, as an officer, that you’re being deployed most effectively.
Along with footage of the usual high-adrenalin callouts, there’s a clip of a tourist who’s managed to lock himself out of his Airbnb and who expects one of the coppers to magic up a solution for him.
The officer patiently offers a few suggestions, none of which solves the man’s problem.
He then has to explain, to this guy’s evident annoyance, that smashing down the door would be “disproportionate”.
“So what do we do, then?” the tourist yells. “You’re the police! The police don’t know how to help anyone? The police are rubbish! “Police fail! On the telly!”
At this point, I’d have Tasered the guy.