BRIT. J.

CRIMINOL

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BOOK REVIEW

You’re Nicked: Investigating British Television Police Series. By Ben Lamb.

(Manchester University Press, 2019, 232pp. £80.00 hb).

Ben Lamb is a cultural theorist at Teesside University who specializes in television

studies. His research interests are social exclusion, representation in popular culture
and public policy, all of which have a significant overlap with criminology (particu-
larly cultural criminology) and all of which are reflected in You’re Nicked: Investigating
British Television Police Series. The purpose of the monograph is to provide an analysis
of the representation of the dichotomy between public space and private space in the
British popular cultural artefact of the television police series. Lamb draws attention
to the fact that this is the first television studies work to include all six decades of the
television police series and the exhaustive scope of the monograph is just one of several
outstanding features. The study is divided into six chapters, with each except for the
first (which combines the 1950s and 1960s) dedicated to a decade, bookended by a brief
introduction and conclusion. Lamb begins with Dixon of Dock Green (BBC Television
Service, 1955–1976), analyses two to four series in each chapter and finishes with Happy
Valley (BBC One, 2014–2016, with the third season currently in production). One could
not hope for a more comprehensive treatment of the subject.
In the Introduction, Lamb describes each chapter as being divided into three
sections, dealing with visual style, the representation of socio-economic pressures in
the domestic spaces of civilian characters and the representation of the tension be-
tween public order and private pressures in the domestic spaces of police characters, re-
spectively. This structure is not always apparent, however, with the six chapters divided
into between 10 and 18 sections (in addition to one to four subsections in four of the
chapters) that do not always proceed from visual style to civilian domestic space to po-
lice domestic space. Both the content (from aural-visual to historical to criminological)
and length (from less than a page to several pages) of the sections vary greatly, making
the architecture of the argument (and its accompanying evidence) difficult to follow in
places. Lamb’s ambition in this study, which I discuss below, is admirable and, while his
ingenuity, vision and competence are beyond question, the aims and objectives could
only be fully achieved within the confines of 232 pages by employing a more meticulous
structure. His Introduction is a case in point, condensing an introduction, literature
review, rationale, methodology and extended abstract into a mere 12 pages. This could
usefully have been doubled in size and, indeed, the clearest elucidation of the study’s
objectives appears in the Conclusion.
The four objectives reveal the degree of Lamb’s ambition, to: (1) chart the impact of
production technologies, visual style and ideological composition on the development
of the genre; (2) examine whether the representation of the dichotomy between public
space and private space conforms or contests conventional accounts; (3) provide an
original and unique methodological framework for the discipline of television studies
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 BOOK REVIEW

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and (4) establish the extent to which television police series provide evidence of social
change. His description of the third objective is particularly revealing: ‘Having focused
on the use of space to challenge inherent assumption repeatedly made about different
production techniques, modes of realism, narrative formats, and ideologies, You’re
nicked provides a revisionist history of British television, British society, and British cul-
ture’ (p. 11). This alone seems likely to fill a monograph, but it is one of four for Lamb,
who is, in addition, resolved to avoid a flaw common to his predecessors in television
studies by engaging with the relevant criminological theory.
The diversity of and disparity among the sections is echoed in the chapters, which
lack uniformity in their legal and criminological engagement, in consequence of which
some will hold substantially more interest for criminologists than others. Chapters 1
(1950s and 1960s), 3 (1980s), 4 (1990s) and 6 (2010s) all explore the relationship be-
tween one or more television series and one or more criminological paradigms or the-
ories. These analyses demonstrate a considerable amount of expertise from Lamb, who
combines insight into television studies with capable and illuminating criminological
commentary. Like all of the best criticism, whether literary or audio-visual, Lamb’s
analyses explore both the way in which criminology enriches narrative complexity and
the way in which audio-visual narratives exemplify criminological theory and practice.
The criminological connections are as follows: Z-Cars (BBC1, 1962–1978) with Robert
Merton’s anomie theory, Albert K. Cohen’s status frustration and Terence Morris’ social
ecology (Chapter 1); The Gentle Touch (ITV, 1980–1984) and Juliet Bravo (BBC1, 1980–
1985) with Derek B. Cornish and Ronald V. Clarke’s rational choice theory (Chapter 3);
The Bill (ITV, 1982–2010), the longest running British television police series to date,
with Lawrence E. Cohen and Marcus Felson’s routine activity theory (Chapter 3); Prime
Suspect (ITV, 1991–2006) with the right realism of Charles Murray, specifically his con-
ception of the underclass, which rears its ugly head again in Happy Valley (Chapters 4
and 6) and The Cops (BBC Two, 1998–2001) with the left realism of John Lea and Jock
Young (Chapter 4).
Lamb’s criminological commentary is for the most part capable and illuminating,
though subject to occasional slips. In my opinion, the suggestion that Happy Valley en-
dorses Murray’s biologically based, ultra-elitist concept of an underclass (or the socially
excluded, to use the more conciliatory British version) does not do justice to the moral
complexity of the series. The related claim about Prime Suspect seems even further off
the mark, running completely contrary to e.g. Gray Cavender and Nancy C.  Jurik’s
(2012) Justice Provocateur: Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect. Remaining on
the subject of right realism, there is also a curious reference to ‘rates of violent crime
continued to climb through the 1990s’ (p. 183), which flies in the face of received crim-
inological wisdom about the great (albeit it is still largely unexplained) crime drop
from 1994 to 2014. I make these points because I know that criminologists will pick up
on them, but I do not wish to detract from the praise due to Lamb for treading new
disciplinary ground by successfully incorporating criminology into his methodological
framework for television studies.
I mentioned the degree of Lamb’s ambition in my critique of the structure of the
monograph and it is to his great credit that he clearly achieves the first three of the four
objectives he sets himself, establishing a new methodological framework, exploring
the representation of the public-private spatial dichotomy and delineating the relation-
ships among production technologies, visual style and ideological composition. There
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 BOOK REVIEW

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is a sense in which he also achieves the fourth, determining the extent to which televi-
sion series provide evidence of social change. In this regard, his contextual analyses are
perceptive, explaining the relevance of the social, political and legal milieus in which
the series were aired including e.g. the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates’ Courts
Act 1978, the Scarman Report (1981), the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and austerity.
Notwithstanding, the fourth objective as stated in the Conclusion is an abbreviation of
the objective as stated in the Introduction, where it is to ‘consider to what extent the po-
lice series genre can be treated as evidence of social change and what its contribution to
that social change might be’ (p. 8). In other words, Lamb initially sets out to investigate
and explain a reciprocal relationship between representation and reality and, while he
discloses the impact of the latter on the former in detail, the impact of the former on
the latter is occasional and lacking in conviction. This is likely to disappoint cultural
criminologists in particular.
One should, however, bear in mind that this is a monograph written by a cultural
theorist for other cultural theorists and television scholars. As such, it is eminently
successful, as I hope I have shown. I nonetheless think that You’re Nicked will have only
tangential interest for criminologists (with the possible exception of cultural crimin-
ologists), which is not to diminish its contribution to the discipline. I see the main im-
pact of Lamb’s study not as a resource for criminology researchers or teachers but as a
means by which the paradigms, theories and concepts of criminology are exported to
academics and students in cultural, television, film and literary studies. The expansion
of the reach of criminological thought is of great importance but, if I am right, then
this export could produce more interdisciplinary collaboration, which would make for
yet another achievement by its author.
Rafe McGregor
Edge Hill University, UK
10.1093/bjc/azaa033

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