Softly Softly: Task Force

This seventies BBC Police series takes the careers of Messrs Barlow and Watts, originally in Z Cars and then Softly Softly a stage further. Chief Superintendent Barlow becomes head of C.I.D. in a fictional area of south east England, with John Watt as his assistant. The series deals with a variety of criminal activity. It is not all major crime - some of crimes are quite trivial, so if you are looking for non-stop excitement, you won't find it here Where the series does excel is in portraying the relationship between the regular characters. The series also treats the police as normal human beings, they are flawed, but not excessively so. Their personal lives are almost entirely ignored. Superintendent Watt has a wife who is a G.P. and who appears in the occasional episode, but that is as much as we learn of their private lives. Despite the leisurely pace of many of the episodes, I found the program (the first two series are available on DVD) enjoyable, and generally of a high standard.

"Softly Softly Task Force" was a spin-off of the series "Softly Softly." The above series ran for several seasons and lasted over 140 episodes. By some miracle and bearing in mind we are talking about the BBC, most of the episodes of "Softly Softly Task Force" actually exist in the archives. Thank goodness for that! This is an immensely entertaining series and it makes a change to have a Police drama set and filmed somewhere other than in London. The characters of Frank Windsor and Stratford Johns are transferred to this fictional town in the North and they make major changes to the Police station. As a result of these changes, the station is running more smoothly. Frank Windsor was in more episodes than the other regular cast members. The writing is pretty good on the whole and we have the usual high acting standards. Once in a while, "Softly Softly Task Force" can be a bit more gritty and hard-edged. I hope all episodes surface on DVD at some stage.