Z-Cars: Friday Night Review

Whilst everyone is out going to clubs and having a good time in general on Friday night, the night shift kicks in for our Policemen and it is far from a good night...

What we see from these episodes is that they are mainly focused on one pair of Police officers with appearances from the other regulars, in this case this episode is mainly focused on Steele and Lynch with Steele investigating a motorcycle accident followed by Lynch and a Traffic Warden who already has had a bad day by cleaning the remains of a child off the road, this episode does not hold back on the grim tone. The situation is a tragic one where a brother and sister are killed by a drunk driver, so now Steel and Lynch have to inform their mother of her loss, this episode gets darker by the minute yet strangely there are lighter parts set in the canteen where the officers try to get some dinner, it does feel strange but balances the tone of the episode.

At this point, Steele and Lynch find a very drunk person with a sober friend accidentally breaking a window, the drunk man thought he was practising discus, it's pretty good drunk acting as it makes a nice change from the more violent drunks you would normally see. They arrive at the motorcycle victims house with Steele aided by the sober friend of the drunk to break the news to the mother. One of the benefits of these episodes is that they don't play any tragic music over the scenes so it has a more of a realism feel to it and it works well in scenes like this one.

We move on to two other sub-plots in this episode, one is a failed attempt of arson and the other is the Traffic Warden following a stolen van and ending up in an accident herself, I do feel very sorry for her, first was a dead child, then a dead brother and sister and then ending up in a ditch knocked out, she must feel unlucky at the end of the day, luckily PC Wier and Fancy Smith arrive on the scene and recover her so there are no more deaths in this episode (Thank god), eventually the criminals in the van do get caught in the end.

We move on to the final part of Friday Night, the failed arson attempt by old Grampa who I'm guessing is well known to everyone in the Newtown area as he is under the delusion that someone told him to set fire to the gas station, but he forgot his matches which are used by the officers in the station so he goes to the pub to get some, which ends up in a bar room brawl by a member of Grampa's family who is also drunk (Looks as if nearly everybody is drunk in Newtown on Friday Night), of course the arson attempt failed and it sounds as though Grampa is known for this kind of behaviour in the area as I said earlier.

So in conclusion, it's quiet a good episode if a very grim one, it does show that Z-Cars is a cut above the other Police dramas they were making at the time so if anyone has a chance to watch this show, this would be one of the episodes worth watching.