Wycliffe (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Wycliffe is a British
TV series, based on W. J. Burley
's novels about Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe
. It was produced by HTV and broadcast on the ITV
Network, following a pilot episode on 7 August 1993, between 24 July 1994 and 5 July 1998. The series was filmed in Cornwall
, with a production office in Truro
. Music for the series was composed by Nigel Hess
and was awarded the Royal Television Society
award for the best television theme. Wycliffe is played by Jack Shepherd, assisted by DI Doug Kersey (Jimmy Yuill
) and DI Lucy Lane (Helen Masters
).
Each episode deals with a murder investigation. In the early series, the stories are adapted from Burley's books and are in classic whodunit
style, often with quirky characters and plot elements. In later seasons, the tone becomes more naturalistic and there is more emphasis on internal politics within the police.
, long-term unemployment, and prejudice against new age travellers
are shown in various episodes. Wycliffe and his team are responsible for a large geographical area and often have to spend time away from home during an investigation. This can cause problems for Wycliffe, who is shown as a contented family man, married to a teacher (Lynn Farleigh
) and with two teenage children; it also makes it difficult for Lane and Kersey, who are both single, to form relationships outside work.
Wycliffe's beat appears to cover mainly central and west Cornwall. There are frequent mentions of certain major towns, including the city of Truro
, Newquay
, Camborne
and Penzance
(these places were also used as locations). But others in the same area, such as Falmouth
, St Austell
and St Ives
, figure much less frequently. It is reasonable to assume that, as a Detective Superintendent, Wycliffe is the head of CID for one division, the boundary of which appears to run approximately from Padstow on the north coast to St Austell and Carlyon Bay on the south. He does not deal with places in north and east Cornwall, such as Bude or Launceston. Bodmin
(actually mainly Bodmin Moor
) features strongly in one episode, about the so-called Beast of Bodmin
(which is said to be a big cat), but that's about as far east as Wycliffe ever gets. In the final episode (Land's End) Wycliffe refers to Wadebridge, near Bodmin, as being on "the other side of the county".
(Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
is no longer organised as Divisions. In real life, the Major Crime Investigation Team in Cornwall, which would presumably be headed by Wycliffe, is based at Newquay
, but his Divisional HQ appears to be somewhere in the Camborne area.)
piano reflects Jack Shepherd's interest in music. Shepherd did all his own piano playing in the series. Helen Masters became pregnant at the beginning of Series 5 and scripts were adjusted so that her character, Lane, could also be pregnant. Many of the smaller places mentioned are fictional, perhaps to avoid possible actions for libel.
and forensic work in a reasonably accurate way, but the emphasis is more on the human stories surrounding the murders. Wycliffe is a quiet, thoughtful man, a skilled observer of people and an astute interviewer, and these qualities enable him to solve the crimes.
Internal police politics provide slow-burning story arcs in the later series, with Wycliffe constantly having to deal with red tape
, budget restraints and a blustering, image-obsessed Deputy Chief Constable. Lane is offered promotion, though she later realises she is being used to fulfil sexual equality quotas in the force rather than being judged on her ability; as a result there are tensions between her and Kersey, though they have previously been close. Kersey is the subject of an internal investigation and is forced to reconsider his future career after being accused of causing the death of a prisoner in custody.
Wycliffe's frequent meetings with the Deputy Chief Constable, Stevens, are slightly odd. In real life, there would almost certainly be a Detective Chief Superintendent as the head of CID throughout the force, who would report in turn to one of a series of Assistant Chief Constables, each with a particular responsibility such as Operations or Personnel. The Deputy Chief Constable is normally too senior to be troubled with operational details, unless a major crisis occurs.
The police force is described as "South West Constabulary", which is a fictional title. However, assuming that SWC covers at least Cornwall and Devon (which is a real force area), it is also strange that Stevens is so often on hand, and even appears to have an office in the Divisional HQ. Such a postholder would really be based at County HQ (in the case of the real life Devon and Cornwall Constabulary the HQ is at Exeter) and not be so free to get in Wycliffe's way.
A feature-length 'special' was filmed between Series 4 and Series 5, which ended with Wycliffe being shot by a criminal. During Series 5, he is shown struggling to recover from the trauma of this injury; the darker tone of this series culminates with Wycliffe falsely accused of a crime and only proven innocent at the last moment.
On occasion, the plot of an episode could anticipate events in real life. In the episode Dead on arrival (Series 3, Episode 1), broadcast on 9 June 1996, several illegal immigrants were found to be suffocated in an airtight container lorry. Four years later, fifty-eight illegal immigrants did indeed suffocate in a lorry in Dover
, an event which inspired the Hong Kong
action film Stowaway
.
Notes:
† includes the pilot episode originally aired on 7 August 1993.
‡ includes the Christmas Special originally aired on 27 December 1997.
The pilot episode was originally aired one year earlier than the commissioned first series, in the summer of 1993. The cast of the pilot differs from that used for the commissioned series; Jack Shepherd plays Wycliffe in both the pilot and the commissioned series.
Notes:
† pilot episode.
The fifth and final series saw Jack Shepherd directing two episodes: On Offer; and Standing Stone. During the filming of this series, Jimmy Yuill fell ill with meningitis
. While he was in hospital the production company (HTV) terminated his contract. Though, he made a full recovery, the production company (HTV) refused to allow him to return to the programme, apparently for insurance reasons. This caused considerable ill-feeling, and Jack Shepherd made it clear he did not wish to continue as Wycliffe. ITV did not recommission the programme.
Notes:
† Christmas Special.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
TV series, based on W. J. Burley
W. J. Burley
William John Burley was a British crime writer, best known for his books featuring the detective Charles Wycliffe, who became the basis of the popular Wycliffe television series throughout the mid 1990s....
's novels about Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe
Charles Wycliffe
Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe is a fictional detective, created by author W. J. Burley. He is featured in twenty-two novels. ....
. It was produced by HTV and broadcast on the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
Network, following a pilot episode on 7 August 1993, between 24 July 1994 and 5 July 1998. The series was filmed in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
, with a production office in Truro
Truro
Truro is a city and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The city is the centre for administration, leisure and retail in Cornwall, with a population recorded in the 2001 census of 17,431. Truro urban statistical area, which includes parts of surrounding parishes, has a 2001 census...
. Music for the series was composed by Nigel Hess
Nigel Hess
Nigel John Hess is a British composer best known for his television, theatre and film soundtracks, including the theme tunes to Wycliffe, Dangerfield, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and Ladies in Lavender.-Biography:...
and was awarded the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
award for the best television theme. Wycliffe is played by Jack Shepherd, assisted by DI Doug Kersey (Jimmy Yuill
Jimmy Yuill
Jimmy Yuill is an actor, born in 1959, in Golspie, Scotland.He is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and later joined the Renaissance Theatre Company. He has appeared in many of Kenneth Branagh's films, most recently as Corin in the 2006 As You Like It...
) and DI Lucy Lane (Helen Masters
Helen Masters
Helen Masters is an English actress who has appeared on stage, film and TV.-Early life:Helen Masters grew up in Warwickshire. She attended Kingsley School, Leamington Spa and Solihull School...
).
Each episode deals with a murder investigation. In the early series, the stories are adapted from Burley's books and are in classic whodunit
Whodunit
A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...
style, often with quirky characters and plot elements. In later seasons, the tone becomes more naturalistic and there is more emphasis on internal politics within the police.
Setting and characters
The Cornish setting is an important feature of the series, providing both picturesque landscapes and glimpses into the local way of life. Many characters work in the tourist industry. Problems of the region such as the struggling fishing industryFishing industry
The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products....
, long-term unemployment, and prejudice against new age travellers
New age travellers
New Age Travellers are groups of people who often espouse New Age or hippie beliefs and travel between music festivals and fairs in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses, narrowboats and caravans converted into...
are shown in various episodes. Wycliffe and his team are responsible for a large geographical area and often have to spend time away from home during an investigation. This can cause problems for Wycliffe, who is shown as a contented family man, married to a teacher (Lynn Farleigh
Lynn Farleigh
-Television and film:Lynn Farleigh is perhaps best known for playing: Helen Wycliffe in Wycliffe; Krupskaya opposite Patrick Stewart's Lenin in the historical BBC drama Fall of Eagles; and the glamorous Vivien Ashton in the second series of the LWT secret agent series Wish Me Luck broadcast in...
) and with two teenage children; it also makes it difficult for Lane and Kersey, who are both single, to form relationships outside work.
Wycliffe's beat appears to cover mainly central and west Cornwall. There are frequent mentions of certain major towns, including the city of Truro
Truro
Truro is a city and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The city is the centre for administration, leisure and retail in Cornwall, with a population recorded in the 2001 census of 17,431. Truro urban statistical area, which includes parts of surrounding parishes, has a 2001 census...
, Newquay
Newquay
Newquay is a town, civil parish, seaside resort and fishing port in Cornwall, England. It is situated on the North Atlantic coast of Cornwall approximately west of Bodmin and north of Truro....
, Camborne
Camborne
Camborne is a town and civil parish in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is at the western edge of a conurbation comprising Camborne, Pool and Redruth....
and Penzance
Penzance
Penzance is a town, civil parish, and port in Cornwall, England, in the United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is approximately 75 miles west of Plymouth and 300 miles west-southwest of London...
(these places were also used as locations). But others in the same area, such as Falmouth
Falmouth, Cornwall
Falmouth is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,635.Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which begins some 200 miles away in Bath, Somerset....
, St Austell
St Austell
St Austell is a civil parish and a major town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated on the south coast approximately ten miles south of Bodmin and 30 miles west of the border with Devon at Saltash...
and St Ives
St Ives, Cornwall
St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...
, figure much less frequently. It is reasonable to assume that, as a Detective Superintendent, Wycliffe is the head of CID for one division, the boundary of which appears to run approximately from Padstow on the north coast to St Austell and Carlyon Bay on the south. He does not deal with places in north and east Cornwall, such as Bude or Launceston. Bodmin
Bodmin
Bodmin is a civil parish and major town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated in the centre of the county southwest of Bodmin Moor.The extent of the civil parish corresponds fairly closely to that of the town so is mostly urban in character...
(actually mainly Bodmin Moor
Bodmin Moor
Bodmin Moor is a granite moorland in northeastern Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is in size, and originally dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history....
) features strongly in one episode, about the so-called Beast of Bodmin
Beast of Bodmin
The Beast of Bodmin, also known as The Beast of Bodmin Moor like The Beast of Exmoor, is a phantom wild cat purported to live in Cornwall, in the United Kingdom...
(which is said to be a big cat), but that's about as far east as Wycliffe ever gets. In the final episode (Land's End) Wycliffe refers to Wadebridge, near Bodmin, as being on "the other side of the county".
(Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
Devon and Cornwall Police, formerly Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England and the unitary authorities of Plymouth, Torbay and the Isles of Scilly....
is no longer organised as Divisions. In real life, the Major Crime Investigation Team in Cornwall, which would presumably be headed by Wycliffe, is based at Newquay
Newquay
Newquay is a town, civil parish, seaside resort and fishing port in Cornwall, England. It is situated on the North Atlantic coast of Cornwall approximately west of Bodmin and north of Truro....
, but his Divisional HQ appears to be somewhere in the Camborne area.)
Miscellanea
Wycliffe's hobby of playing jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
piano reflects Jack Shepherd's interest in music. Shepherd did all his own piano playing in the series. Helen Masters became pregnant at the beginning of Series 5 and scripts were adjusted so that her character, Lane, could also be pregnant. Many of the smaller places mentioned are fictional, perhaps to avoid possible actions for libel.
Murder Investigations and Police Themes
The series shows detectiveDetective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
and forensic work in a reasonably accurate way, but the emphasis is more on the human stories surrounding the murders. Wycliffe is a quiet, thoughtful man, a skilled observer of people and an astute interviewer, and these qualities enable him to solve the crimes.
Internal police politics provide slow-burning story arcs in the later series, with Wycliffe constantly having to deal with red tape
Red tape
Red tape is excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making...
, budget restraints and a blustering, image-obsessed Deputy Chief Constable. Lane is offered promotion, though she later realises she is being used to fulfil sexual equality quotas in the force rather than being judged on her ability; as a result there are tensions between her and Kersey, though they have previously been close. Kersey is the subject of an internal investigation and is forced to reconsider his future career after being accused of causing the death of a prisoner in custody.
Wycliffe's frequent meetings with the Deputy Chief Constable, Stevens, are slightly odd. In real life, there would almost certainly be a Detective Chief Superintendent as the head of CID throughout the force, who would report in turn to one of a series of Assistant Chief Constables, each with a particular responsibility such as Operations or Personnel. The Deputy Chief Constable is normally too senior to be troubled with operational details, unless a major crisis occurs.
The police force is described as "South West Constabulary", which is a fictional title. However, assuming that SWC covers at least Cornwall and Devon (which is a real force area), it is also strange that Stevens is so often on hand, and even appears to have an office in the Divisional HQ. Such a postholder would really be based at County HQ (in the case of the real life Devon and Cornwall Constabulary the HQ is at Exeter) and not be so free to get in Wycliffe's way.
A feature-length 'special' was filmed between Series 4 and Series 5, which ended with Wycliffe being shot by a criminal. During Series 5, he is shown struggling to recover from the trauma of this injury; the darker tone of this series culminates with Wycliffe falsely accused of a crime and only proven innocent at the last moment.
On occasion, the plot of an episode could anticipate events in real life. In the episode Dead on arrival (Series 3, Episode 1), broadcast on 9 June 1996, several illegal immigrants were found to be suffocated in an airtight container lorry. Four years later, fifty-eight illegal immigrants did indeed suffocate in a lorry in Dover
Dover
Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...
, an event which inspired the Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
action film Stowaway
Stowaway (2001 film)
Stowaway , alternatively known as Snakeheads, is a 2001 Hong Kong action film based on the true story of a group of stowaways from Fuzhou illegally immigrating to the United Kingdom in 2000...
.
List of Episodes
Wycliffe ran for five series from 24 July 1994 to 5 July 1998, and included a pilot episode (originally shown on 7 August 1993) and a Christmas Special shown between the fourth and fifth series.| Series | Episodes | Originally Aired |
DVD Releases |
DVD Runtime |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| From | To | Region 1 | Region 2 | Region 4 | ||||
| One | 7† | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Two | 8 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Three | 8 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Four | 8 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Five | 7‡ | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Notes:
† includes the pilot episode originally aired on 7 August 1993.
‡ includes the Christmas Special originally aired on 27 December 1997.
Series 1
The first series of Wycliffe was originally aired on ITV in the summer of 1994.The pilot episode was originally aired one year earlier than the commissioned first series, in the summer of 1993. The cast of the pilot differs from that used for the commissioned series; Jack Shepherd plays Wycliffe in both the pilot and the commissioned series.
| Series No. |
Episode No. |
Title | Directed by | Written by | Original Air Date | Length |
|---|
Notes:
† pilot episode.
Series 2
The second series of Wycliffe was originally aired on ITV in the summer of 1995.| Series No. |
Episode No. |
Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Length |
|---|
Series 3
The third series of Wycliffe was originally aired on ITV in the summer of 1996. There was a short hiatus in the third series due to ITV's coverage of the Euro '96 football tournament.| Series No. |
Episode No. |
Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Length |
|---|
Series 4
The fourth series of Wycliffe was originally aired on ITV in the summer of 1997.| Series No. |
Episode No. |
Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Length |
|---|
Series 5
The final series of Wycliffe was originally aired on ITV in the summer of 1998. The Christmas Special was originally aired about five months earlier in December 1997.The fifth and final series saw Jack Shepherd directing two episodes: On Offer; and Standing Stone. During the filming of this series, Jimmy Yuill fell ill with meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
. While he was in hospital the production company (HTV) terminated his contract. Though, he made a full recovery, the production company (HTV) refused to allow him to return to the programme, apparently for insurance reasons. This caused considerable ill-feeling, and Jack Shepherd made it clear he did not wish to continue as Wycliffe. ITV did not recommission the programme.
| Series No. |
Episode No. |
Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | Length |
|---|
Notes:
† Christmas Special.
External links
- "Wycliffe on Television" page at www.wjburley.com
- "Wycliffe Episode Guide" page at epguides.com