Angel's Slice Of The Pie #8: 35 Years Since Crimewatch UK Hit Our Screens

At Nostalgia Pie, we like to talk about memories that make you all aglow with happiness and make you go skippety-skip down memory lane. But this week's Angel's Slice of the Pie brings back childhood memories of the I'm-so-scared-I need-to-sleep-with-the-light-on-preferably-on-a-little-mattress-in-the-corner-of-my-parents'-room variety - and sadly the subject matter isn't quite so pleasant. But as most of us eighties and nineties kids will know, this show made strangely compelling viewing...

Last month marked a whopping thirty five years since the now axed Crimewatch UK - as it was then called - aired for the first time on June 7th 1984. As I always say - where have the years gone??? Can it really be thirty five years since we heard that famous and distinctive theme tune that was practically a call, no, a demand to action? Has it really been three and a half decades since we saw that opening intro made up of a montage of clips that wouldn't look out of place in The Bill? (Which incidentally also began in 1984!)

Part of the sequence for the opening credits of Crimewatch UK

A NEW CRIME APPEAL TV SHOW

Even though I was tiny - well tinier than I am now - when Crimewatch started, I still remember all the publicity surrounding the new BBC crime appeal show that was to be presented by two very well known faces on British television - Nick Ross and Sue Cook. Even to my very young mind, I knew that this show was a great idea. I was already familiar with Police 5, so I couldn't wait for Crimewatch UK to start. This in itself was strange as a show like this would most definitely give me cause to cower under the covers (with the light on!) but I just had to watch it.

For many years and I don't know why, I always thought I'd watched the very first episode of Crimewatch UK on the night it aired but I later realized I hadn't. So I never got to witness that little piece of TV history when it was first broadcast. It was actually another two years or so before I watched my first Crimewatch episode. I guess by then because I was a little older, I was allowed to stay up a bit later than I normally would but I reckon it was still another couple of years before I could watch an entire episode.

And so began my vocation of being an armchair detective. Though it didn't matter how old I was - I was always a bit nervy after watching Crimewatch - it didn't matter what Nick said! If you've ever seen those videofits and artists impressions of suspects, I'd dare you not to have nightmares! My sister point blank refused to watch Crimewatch at all! And my mum recently revealed that there were a lot of adults at the time who also refused to watch the programme because they too found Crimewatch UK rather scary. As I got older, I'd tune in regularly to see if there were any wanted faces I recognised. I always thought that I would one day be able to phone the studio and say "Yes! I know that man. He lives around the corner from me." And considering some of the places I've lived in in London, that wasn't an impossibility!

And I very nearly got my chance...

I COULD'VE PHONE IN... BUT I DIDN'T!

Unsplash

There was one time, when I was in my teens, that I was ninety-nine per cent sure that a man featured in a reconstruction of a serious incident that took place in a town not far from where we lived, was the same man that I'd seen behaving suspiciously just the day before. After watching the update and speaking to my sister, who actually spoke to the man and saw his accomplice who was hidden from my view, it turned out that I was right! Someone else had already beaten me to it by phoning in and revealing that they were seen in my neighbourhood. I've been kicking myself to this day that I missed my chance to contribute to the fight against crime and it makes me wonder how many other viewers who were 'almost sure' didn't phone in because of that slight doubt.

From watching past episodes it's amazing how many reconstructions and cases I've remembered. Some have stayed with me over the years, and I always wondered about the victim, their families and friends, and whether or not those cases have been solved. There's no getting away from the fact that Crimewatch did some fantastic work and without the show, a lot of criminals may still be walking the streets. But sadly, there's still a high proportion of cases that have yet to be solved. Let's not lose hope though because it has been known for cases to be solved twenty, thirty, even forty years later - however unlikely that might seem.

NICK AND SUE

The very first glimpse of Nick and Sue presenting the very first episode of Crimewatch UK

Even though the show has seen many presenters at the helm throughout the show's thirty three year history, when I think of Crimewatch, I think of the Nick and Sue years. I think they did an excellent job of presenting the show and they worked very well together. I especially liked their voiceovers for the reconstructions in which the delivery was very matter-of-fact and unemotional (in the sense that it was level and steady, not cold and heartless!) but with their softly spoken, gentle voices, it sounded quite soothing! And there was something in their narration that heightened that feeling of suspense and kept you watching until the end; absorbing all the information they were giving you.

JILL DANDO - A VERY SAD LOSS

Of course we cannot talk about Crimewatch without mentioning the late Jill Dando who had taken over from Sue Cook as Nick's partner in fighting crime. Everyone always talks about what they were doing when they heard Diana, Princess of Wales had died, but I still vividly remember the exact moment I heard that Jill Dando had been killed twenty years ago. As everyone knows, Jill was murdered on her own doorstep; it was both tragic and horribly ironic and the entire nation was stunned. I discovered the news just as it broke on Ceefax (really showing my age here!) and I read and re-read the headline over and over again not being able to take in the fact that Jill had a) passed away and b) died in a truly horrendous manner. It was a shocking event and the whole country, it seemed, was in a state of disbelief. The news programmes talked of little else. As many of the news broadcasters were people who had known Jill, it must have been truly horrifying for them.

I don't think that all who were involved in the show could ever for a moment have foreseen that one day they would have to make an appeal for a very dear colleague and friend. I still remember the episode in which an appeal was made on Crimewatch to help catch Jill's killer. Nick Ross opened up the show in what has had to be the darkest and most sombre episode in Crimewatch's history and you couldn't help but feel for him. Nick got through that episode like a pro as he presented Crimewatch without his sidekick, but viewers could sense his very evident sense of loss as well as the sadness of Chief Supt. David Hatcher and DS Jacqui Hames.

Watching it again, I couldn't help but feel very emotional so I can only imagine what it must have felt like in the studio that night. The episode ended with a very moving montage of Jill's clips from the show in which it cleverly looked as though she was appealing for people to come forward with information, along with tributes from people who knew her. Sadly and very disappointingly, Jill's murder has been consigned to the compartment of Crimewatch's less successful appeals and no one has ever been brought to justice for her death but we live in hope that one day the killer will be caught.

CRIMEWATCH 1984 - 1990s

The so-called 'vintage' Crimewatch episodes - from 1984 to the late nineties - seem to have attracted something of a cult following if comments are anything to go by. Viewers feel that they are more watchable due to the quality of the reconstructions and there being less distractions in the studio. For years I thought I was the only one who thought that Crimewatch was better in the eighties and nineties and that the show had gone downhill a bit after 2000! I prefer the format of these earlier episodes; the Cook-Ross dynamic; the police presence (David Hatcher, Helen Phelps, and Jacqui Hames) the mini appeals featured on Incident Desk, and the quality of the main reconstructions. They were brilliantly made with a short-film feel to it, well narrated by Nick and Sue, and some of the actors played the bad guy so well they made you jump right out of your skin!

RECONSRUCTIONS OF LATER YEARS

The reconstructions were also quite eerie and some of them really did chill you to the bone. This was all a sharp contrast to the reconstructions of the last ten years or so before the show was cancelled which were just, I'm sorry to say, dire! Yes, I'm well aware that these reconstructions are not there to entertain, but the graphic scenes, silly effects, and dramatic music were really off-putting and gave the impression of a low-budget movie. Not a patch on the previous reconstructions. Furthermore it made me think about the family and friends of the poor victims - would they really need to see how brutal the last few minutes of their loved ones' lives were? I personally found that very disturbing and that's something the older episodes of the show spared us all from.

WHY DO WE STILL WATCH OLD EPISODES?

Why do I feel so compelled to watch old school episodes of Crimewatch? Well it's because despite the fact the show deals with some very unpleasant issues, as any child of the eighties and nineties will tell you, it's a significant part of our childhoods. Even if we didn't get to stay up late and watch it, we were aware of Crimewatch UK; we heard people talking about it, and of course it featured high profile cases that were in the news. We understood why our parents were so protective of us, and we felt that sense of shock and alarm when kids just like us went missing and never came home again.

Moreover when we watch these episodes, it takes us back to a time we knew. We marvel at just how much society, lifestyle, technology, fashion and culture has changed. And for us kids who grew up in the age of the superhero, we liked seeing the good guys take on the bad guys - and hopefully win! Because Crimewatch was not a Hollywood production, the bad guy wasn't always caught and justice wasn't always served, I'm sad to say. But it sent out a message that people were prepared to fight back and weren't going to make it easy for criminals to hide. It must have given villains quite a few sleepless nights - and that's always a good thing. Make 'em sweat! But more importantly, we still live in hope that all those who have literally got away with murder and goodness knows what else over the years, whether they were featured on Crimewatch or not, will be made to pay for their crimes and that justice will be served for the victims and their families.

That's why getting rid of Crimewatch was such a bad move. Bring it back - or we really will have nightmares! Oh and another thing most of us who have watched Crimewatch since the early years have in common... we didn't seem to care much for Aladdin's Cave!

What are your memories of Crimewatch UK?