Genre Crime drama Developed by Granada Television Country of origin United Kingdom | Created by Stewart Harcourt Composer(s) Dominik Scherrer | |
Starring Robert Lindsay,
David Troughton,
Ciarán McMenamin,
Lydia Leonard | ||
Jericho is an ITV British crime drama series which was transmitted for four episodes between 16 October and 6 November 2005. It was created and written by Stewart Harcourt and starred Robert Lindsay as Detective Inspector Michael Jericho, who is loved by the public but embarrassed by his status as a hero. The series was set in London in 1958.
Contents
The series was shown in the United States in 2006 and 2007 as part of the PBS Mystery! series and by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2008.
Inspector Michael Jericho
Detective Inspector Michael Jericho – who has a Jewish background – is the son of an English policeman who returned from World War I a violent and changed man. Young Jericho witnessed his father shot and killed in his own front hall by two gunmen. In his father's right hand was his pocket watch, which Jericho now keeps with him constantly. In the series, Jericho carries on a private feud with a local crime boss, whom Jericho believes, but cannot prove, either brought about his father's death or knew who had him killed; the boss in turn has suborned a thuggish Scotland Yard Inspector named Christie to hound Jericho by planting scandal sheets under his nose about his father being a "corrupt policeman" or by implying Jericho has a less than professional relationship with his downstairs neighbour – a French prostitute. Jericho's mother is still alive, although they are only seen meeting in the cemetery on the anniversary of his father's death.
Jericho served in World War II. Besides his off again-on again relationship with his downstairs neighbour, he is a workaholic who sleeps poorly. He has a faithful secretary, a tough sergeant, a younger DI assistant, and, as comic relief, an informer who is a street fence. The last episode, "The Hollow Men", features in-jokes about the TV industry: a director replaces Jericho with a comic actor, starring as Jericho in a fictionalized series of Jericho's Scotland Yard cases; at a banquet meeting of police widows and orphans, Christie tries to get Jericho as the master of ceremonies after guest speaker Benny Hill can't come.
Production and reception
The series was seen as an attempt to exploit ITV's success in period crime drama, best exemplified by Foyle's War, and to rival the BBC's Sunday night dramas such as Waking the Dead. The first episode had 5.9 million viewers, but this fell to 4.7 million for the second episode, less than for its BBC rival. Critical response was cautious, but the series was not deemed a complete success and a second series was not commissioned.
Episode titles
Three of the four episode titles come from poems by T. S. Eliot. "A Pair of Ragged Claws" (quoted from a book of Eliot poetry owned by the mistress of a murder victim in that episode) and "To Murder and Create" (a murder victim has the name "Thomas Stearns Eliot" in that episode) are lines from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). "The Hollow Men" is also the title of Eliot's 1925 poem.