I n contrast, Kojack the popular television series, was merely entertainment with a lollipop sucking police captain who dressed too well for the job. The streets were more pastel coloured and the cops all good and just men. We also get glimpses of what their lives are like off-duty when we see them with their girlfriends, wives and friends. These are just quick glimpses, a taste of what it must be like to be in a cop s real life. But it s never for too long because we want to see the cops back in action.
American cops dominate films and television worldwide only because of Hollywood s power.
But every society has its own vision of what its policemen are like. In Britain the image began softly with good old bobby shows like Dixon of Dock Green. This was how the British first imagined their policemen to be uncle-like characters dispensing warmth and good advice. But over the decades as the media intruded more into the lives of real policemen, revealing corruption, racism and brutality, this image changed. From Dixon, British television moved to stripping away the rosy tinted image of their policeman to show him in a new reality.