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Actor who played Bert Lynch in BBC police drama Z-Cars and appeared in shows ranging from Doctor Who to Nightingales

The actor James Ellis (also known as Jimmy), who has died aged 82, was the longest-serving original cast member of the hugely popular BBC television series Z-Cars. When Z-Cars began in 1962, it represented a major change in the way the police were characterised in fiction. The BBC police series Dixon of Dock Green had been running for seven years, with Jack Warner playing the understanding, avuncular police constable Dixon. Z-Cars, by contrast, had the actors Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor making cynical remarks about the death of a murdered police colleague whose funeral they were attending, and Ellis, as Constable Bert Lynch, hearing from a colleague how he beats up his wife, without doing anything about it. Z-Cars attempted to show how moral anarchy in the rundown industrial area of the...

Ask me what my favourite Scooby Doo episode is, and I'd promptly say that it's the one that takes place in the creepy mansion called What The Hex Going On. In case you haven't seen it, a guy dresses up as the ghost of Elias Kingston, a blue faced old wretch who apparently has the power to age people into skeletons (visually, he's the spit of Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham). It's great stuff, even if the villain inexplicably wears glasses underneath all the heavy make-up.

I only mention this since I've seen Ghost Light, a fortunate return to form for Doctor Who after the silly Battlefield. I don't know, Ghost Light just reminds me of Hex for some odd reason – both stories take place in a spooky old mansion with sliding doors, shadows and creepy rooms, complete with a baddie in long flowing robes wreaking havoc. Plus, the title...

Like it or not, Star Wars has always been a steadying influence on sci-fi telly since its debut in 1977. You can picture the exasperated look on Graham Williams' face as he realised that he now had to compete with a big-budget blockbuster that threw more visual trickery in your face than you could shake a magic stick at. Interestingly, despite the frugal budgets available, some of the results were not half bad. The Invasion Of Time pays homage to the film convincingly in its opening moments, while the spaceship scenes of Underworld and The Invisible Enemy are very very good indeed.

And since then, there's been the merchandise (kids today now have the Star Wars figure effect with the many Doctor Who figures), sly visual references (The End Of Time bar scene) and of course, Kamelion.

It's a nice idea, but in practice, the concept of Kamelion became a bit botched.