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Z-Cars

1962

Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.

Frank Windsor

Cast · Known for Z-Cars

Actor known for the television series Z-Cars and its spin-offs Softly, Softly and Softly, Softly: Taskforce.

Raymond Dyer

Raymond Dyer is known for Nothing Barred (1961) and Z Cars (1962).

James Ellis

Cast · Known for Z-Cars

Legendary Northern Irish actor who came to prominence in the 1960s for his role of Bert Lynch in the BBC TV series Z Cars.

Kate Brown

Kate Brown is an English actress, known for her recurring roles in British shows like Z-Cars, Crossroads, and Dixon of Dock Green.

John Rolfe

John Richard Rolfe (1935 – 12 August 2020) was a British actor. He was named after the colonist who married Pocahontas in Jamestown, Virginia. His stage work includes appearances at the Bristol Old Vic and with the RSC.His television credits include: Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Adam Adamant Lives!, The First Lady, Softly, Softly, Doctor Who (in the serials The War Machines, The Moonbase and The Green Death), Paul Temple, The Troubleshooters, Out of the Unknown, The Regiment, Spy Trap, Warship, Oil Strike North, Survivors, Blake's 7, Minder, Secret Army, The Enigma Files, Yes Minister, One by One, Howards' Way and The House of Eliott. He did the first, moustached and spectacled postman in "Mr. Bean Rides Again" (he played the postman seen before Mr. Bean got locked in the letterbox after he stole a lady's stamp for his own letter). He also played Graham in the 1980 film McVicar, starring Roger Daltrey. In 1994 he guest starred in The Bill.

Brian Blessed

Cast · Known for Peppa Pig, Z-Cars

Brian Blessed OBE (born 9 October 1936)is an English actor. He is known for his distinctive bushy beard, booming voice, and exuberant personality and performances. He portrayed PC "Fancy" Smith in Z-Cars; Augustus in the 1976 BBC television production of I, Claudius; King Richard IV in the first series of Blackadder; Prince Vultan in Flash Gordon; Bustopher Jones and Old Deuteronomy in the 1981 original London production of Cats at the New London Theatre; Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, in Henry V; Boss Nass in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace; and the voice of Clayton and the Tarzan yell in Disney's Tarzan. In 2016, Blessed was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the arts and charity. Blessed was born on 9 October 1936 at Montagu Hospital in Mexborough, West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of William Blessed, a socialist coal miner at Hickleton Main Colliery (and himself the son of a coal miner) and cricketer for the Yorkshire second team, and Hilda (née Wall). He had a brother Alan, seven years younger, and the pair "went everywhere together" when they were growing up. Alan Blessed died from leukaemia aged 52; their mother died aged 87, and their father died aged 99. Blessed's great-great-grandfather, Jabez Blessed, was the father of 13 children and worked as a china and glass dealer in Brigg, Lincolnshire; many of Blessed's relatives hail from Brigg. Blessed went to Bolton on Dearne Secondary Modern School, and completed his national service in the RAF, in Bicester, before enrolling at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 1956.

Nick Brimble

Cast · Known for Grantchester

Nick Brimble is an English actor known for his performance as Little John in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and his appearances on various television shows. His credits include: Softly, Softly, Z-Cars, Space: 1999, The Sweeney, The Professionals, Danger UXB, The Onedin Line, Blake's 7, Robin of Sherwood, Crossbow, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Dempsey & Makepeace, Bergerac, To Play the King, The Final Cut, The Bill, Casualty, Heartbeat, State of Play, Lock, Stock..., Doc Martin, Lust for a Vampire, and A Knight's Tale. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Barrie

Cast · Known for Z-Cars

John Barrie was an English actor who appeared in a number of television shows and films. He became well known for playing the title character on the police series Sergeant Cork from 1963–1968 and playing Detective Inspector Hudson on Z-Cars from 1967–1968.

Derek Martinus

Director · Known for Z-Cars

Derek Buitenhuis (4 April 1931 – 27 March 2014), known professionally as Derek Martinus, was an English television and theatre director. Originally an actor, he directed episodes of Z-Cars and Doctor Who, for which he was best known. He also had a long career directing stage productions. For the BBC, he directed several Doctor Who serials, Galaxy 4 (1965), Mission to the Unknown (1965), The Tenth Planet (1966), The Evil of the Daleks (1967), and The Ice Warriors (also 1967). His final serial for the programme, Spearhead from Space (1970), was also the first to be made in colour. His period working on the programme spanned the eras of the first three actors to play the lead role. Martinus also directed the Blake's 7 episodes "Trial" and "The Keeper" (both 1979) and over 50 episodes of Z-Cars. He worked on classic serials too, What Maisie Knew (1968), The Black Tulip (1970), A Little Princess (1973) and A Legacy (1975), plus the dramatisation of a 1970s historical fiction best seller, Penmarric. For ITV, he directed The Paper Lads in 1977, winner of the Pye Award for best children's drama. In addition, Martinus directed the army drama series Spearhead, and several series of the children's drama Dodger, Bonzo and the rest in 1985, which also won the Pye Award. For Swedish television, he directed a two-hour political thriller by Jan Guillou, The Wolf. After having learnt Swedish, he directed several plays in civic theatres in Sweden, many of them translated or adapted by his wife. Among others: The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, Volpone by Ben Jonson, The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (the version by Stephen Lowe) and Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill. At the Gate Theatre in London, he directed the British premieres of some rarely performed Strindberg plays, translated from the Swedish by his wife Eivor.

Jon Laurimore

Jon St Alban Laurimore (born 1936) is a British actor, known for his television appearances. His TV credits include The Avengers, The Prisoner, Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Public Eye, Warship, Sutherland's Law, The Onedin Line, Rock Follies, Space: 1999, Doctor Who (in the serial The Masque of Mandragora), I, Claudius, Target, Secret Army, Reilly, Ace of Spies, Minder, Dalziel and Pascoe and Jack the Ripper. He also appeared as police officers in the films A Touch of the Other (1970) and Die Screaming, Marianne (1971). He now lives with his family in Suffolk, England

Natalie Kent

Natalie Kent was born on 16 October 1906 in West Derby, Liverpool, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Z Cars (1962), Make Mine a Double (1959) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968).

Paul Seed

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Paul Seed (1947-2026) was a British television director and former actor. Born in Bideford in Devon, he began his career as an actor, appearing in numerous television series, including Z Cars, Softly Softly: Task Force, Survivors, Doctor Who, Secret Army, Coronation Street, Crown Court and Tales of the Unexpected. In the late 1970s, Seed chose to pursue a career in TV drama directing and completed the BBC Directors' course, following which he directed numerous TV plays, series and serials during the 1980s. He is perhaps best known for directing the BBC's smash-hit 1990 mini-series House of Cards and its sequel To Play the King, adapted by Andrew Davies from Michael Dobbs' novels and famously starring Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart. He continued to direct for television drama series throughout the 1990s including A Touch of Frost and Playing the Field, and in 2002 directed all six episodes of the revival of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. In later years, he has directed episodes of New Tricks, Northern Lights and Lark Rise to Candleford, and in 2010 directed the BBC adaptation of Just William. Description above from the Wikipedia article Paul Seed, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.​

Jeremy Kemp

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jeremy Kemp (3 January 1935 - 19 July 2019) was an English actor. He was known for his roles in the miniseries The Winds of War, The Blue Max and Z-Cars. Kemp was born Jeremy Walker in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, the son of Elsa May (née Kemp) and Edmund Reginald Walker, an engineer, and studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His TV credits include: Colditz, Space: 1999 and a number of American series such as: Hart to Hart, The Greatest American Hero, The Fall Guy, Conan the Adventurer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Winds of War, War and Remembrance and Murder, She Wrote. His film roles include: Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Operation Crossbow, The Blue Max, A Bridge Too Far, Top Secret! and Four Weddings and a Funeral. He also appeared as Cornwall in the 1984 TV movie version of King Lear opposite Laurence Olivier as Lear. Description above from the Wikipedia article Jeremy Kemp, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Philip Martin

Philip Martin (3 July 1938 – 13 December 2020) was an English television screenwriter. He created the BBC television drama series Gangsters in the 1970s and later wrote two television serials for Doctor Who during Colin Baker's tenure as the Sixth Doctor in the 1980s. His early work included regular series such as Z-Cars in the late 1960s/early 1970s, but his most famous work is the postmodern television series Gangsters. This was an examination of race seen through an increasingly surreal vision of Birmingham's criminal underworld. Beginning as an acclaimed one-off edition of Play for Today in 1975, it was followed by two series of 6 episodes each in 1976 and 1978. Martin appeared in the series in several roles, including as himself. His later work includes Tandoori Nights (1985), Star Cops (1987), Virtual Murder (1992), several episodes of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and Luifel & Luifel (2001). He wrote the Doctor Who serials Vengeance on Varos (1985) and The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp (1986). He also wrote a script called Mission to Magnus which featured the character Sil from his previous televised serials. That script was never filmed when the show was put on hiatus in 1985. A novelised version of the script written by Martin was released by Target Books in 1990, and a Big Finish audio drama based on the serial was released in December 2009. He also wrote a Doctor Who gamebook called Invasion of the Ormazoids (1986) as part of the Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who range. His last contributions to the series were The Creed of the Kromon (2004) and Antidote to Oblivion (2013), as Big Finish audio releases. He also revisited the character of Sil in the independent broadcast television series from Reeltime Pictures Ltd., "Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor" (2019).

John Collin

John Collin was a prolific British character actor known for his tough, commanding presence in classic UK television series and films. He is most recognized for his role as Detective Sergeant Cecil Haggar in the long-running BBC police drama Z-Cars.

Douglas Camfield

Director · Known for Doctor Who

Douglas Gaston Sydney Camfield (8 May 1931 – 27 January 1984) was a British television director, active from the 1960s to the 1980s. His directing credits included Doctor Who, Z-Cars, Paul Temple, Public Eye, The Lotus Eaters, Van der Valk, The Sweeney, The Onedin Line, Blake's 7, Shoestring, The Professionals, Out of the Unknown, The Nightmare Man, the BBC dramatisation of Beau Geste, and Ivanhoe, the 1982 television movie. Camfield studied at the York School of Art and aimed to work for The Walt Disney Company. He was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps in 1951 during his national service. Later that year, he transferred to the West Yorkshire Regiment (Territorial Army). He was promoted to lieutenant in 1952 and was training to be in the Special Air Service, but due to an injury, he pulled out of the application process. It has often been noted by those who worked with him that Camfield always retained an affection for the army and brought military standards of organisation to the programmes he subsequently directed.

James Clayton

James Clayton is an actor, known for Doctor Who (1963), The Battle of St. George Without (1969) and Z Cars (1962).

Morris Barry

Director · Known for Z-Cars

Morris Randolph Barry (9 February 1918 – 20 November 2000) was a producer and director for the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s, and also worked as an actor. He made his name as a producer and director on productions such as Angels, Compact and Z-Cars, but his most impressive credit was perhaps as producer of the highly popular dramatisation of Poldark by Winston Graham. Barry directed three Doctor Who stories during the Patrick Troughton years: The Moonbase (1967), The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) and The Dominators (1968). He was known by the cast and crew of Doctor Who to be a somewhat strict and uncompromising director of the old school, but The Moonbase and The Tomb of the Cybermen are often spoken of as classics of 1960s Doctor Who. He was also well known for carrying a music stand to place his script on during rehearsals. He also appeared as an actor in the Doctor Who story The Creature from the Pit in 1979, playing the scientist Tollund. His other acting credits include episodes of Are You Being Served?, Blake's 7, The Day of the Triffids, Tales of the Unexpected, All Creatures Great and Small, and Hi-de-Hi!. Morris Barry died in 2000.

Primi Townsend

Primi Townsend is a British actress. She was a cast member on the sitcom Lame Ducks and is known for her role in the Doctor Who serial The Pirate Planet. Other TV credits include: Z-Cars, Minder, 1990, Blake's 7 and Bergerac. She also appeared recounting her appearance in Doctor Who in a documentary on the season 16 story The Pirate Planet, which was released in 2007.

Gil Brailey

Gil Brailey is a British television actress and screenwriter. She has written episodes of London's Burning, Peak Practice, Heartbeat and Casualty. She has appeared in Z Cars, Harry's Game, Brookside, Hard Cases, Heartbeat, Casualty, Taggart, The Bill and Rosemary & Thyme.

Shaun Curry

Shaun Curry (5 June 1937 – 7 July 2009) was a British actor, best known for his appearances on television. His credits include: Z-Cars, The Saint, Warship, The Sweeney, The New Avengers, Secret Army, Poldark, To the Manor Born, The Professionals, Blake's 7, Fox, Hot Money, Minder, Terry and June, The Gentle Touch, The Bill, Grange Hill, Just Good Friends, London's Burning and Holby City. Educated in part at Buckingham College, Harrow, Served in the Grenadier Guards. Graduating from RADA in 1961, his theatre roles included work in rep, with the RSC, in the West End, and with the National Theatre.

J.G. Devlin

James Gerard Devlin was a Northern Irish actor who made his stage debut in 1931, and had long association with the Ulster Group Theatre. In a career spanning nearly sixty years, he played parts in TV productions such as Z-Cars, Dad's Army, The New Avengers and Bread

Troy Kennedy Martin

Creator · Known for Z-Cars

Troy Kennedy Martin (15 February 1932 – 15 September 2009) was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter best known for creating the long running BBC TV police series Z-Cars, and for the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness. Kennedy Martin's best-known work for the cinema was the screenplay for the original version of The Italian Job.