Inky was a police dog who appeared in the British police drama Softly, Softly: Taskforce

Softly, Softly: Taskforce

Softly, Softly the popular BBC television police drama series, was revamped in 1969, partly to coincide with the coming of colour broadcasting to BBC 1...

during 1969-70. His handler was PC Snow, played by Terence Rigby

Terence Rigby

Terence Christopher Rigby was an English actor with a number of film and television credits to his name. In the 1970s he was well-known as police dog-handler PC Snow in the long-running series Softly, Softly: Taskforce...

. He is remembered for a minor stir he caused on British television.

The scriptwriter wanted to show something of the dangers police officers sometimes faced in their work, but thought it might upset the viewers if one of the characters was killed, so he wrote an episode where the police dog was shot and killed by a gunman. Some viewers were upset by this episode, and shortly after Inky appeared on the children's programme Blue Peter

Blue Peter

Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time...

to assure children who had seen the programme that he was all right.

Inky's replacement on the programme was Radar.