Simon Dunn

Scriptwriter and Comedian

The Thin Blue Clips

It won’t surprise you that as the BBC prepared to broadcast The Thin Blue Line, it got quite a bit of newspaper coverage. That was due to the return of Rowan Atkinson in a Ben Elton written sitcom. As with all these things, the earlier bits tend to try and tie them into the news a little more. Like this, from the Mirror, on 3rd November 1995.

The Wicklow People made a bit more of it a few days later, and now there was an accompanying promo photo of Inspector Fowler.

As the broadcast drew nearer, the Mirror had a piece about the tone of the show, and it’s rather amazing to me that bad language was still a thing in 1995. Having read lots of clippings from the 80s about the new wave shows, which always, without fail, mentioned the language, I would have thought they’d be over it by this time, but no.

And finally, also from the Mirror, this time on the 15th, their angle is Stephen Fry’s return to TV.

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