Road Wars (TV series)
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| Road Wars | |
|---|---|
| 150px | |
| Created by | Bill Rudgard Steve Warr |
| Narrated by | Lee Boardman Claire Goose (Stand-in) |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 7 |
| No. of episodes | 88 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Raw Cut TV |
| Running time | 50-60 mins including adverts mins approx. |
| Production company(s) | Raw Cut Productions |
| Release | |
| Original network | Sky1 |
| Picture format | PAL (576i), HD (1080i) |
| Audio format | Stereo, Dolby Digital |
| Original release | 26 July 2003 – 24 January 2010 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Street Wars Police Interceptors |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Road Wars is a reality television programme created by Raw Cut TV for British Sky Broadcasting and broadcast on Sky1, and also worldwide. Since Series 1 the show was narrated by Lee Boardman[1] who played villain Jez Quigley in ITV soap Coronation Street. The 2nd half of series 7 was narrated by Claire Goose who played Inspector Rachel Weston in ITV1 police drama The Bill.
Road Wars is unlike other previous police programmes on Sky in that it followed the work of officers rather than simply playing police video clips. The programme has documented the changing tactics of criminals, perhaps most importantly their increasing violence and recklessness[dubious ], and the response of the UK police forces. The programme also features some police videos from America, Australia and occasionally Ireland.
Contents
Thames Valley Police
For series 1-6, the programme followed the fourteen members of the Thames Valley Police's roads policing proactive unit (Road Crime Unit) - known as "Tango Victor". They are also said to be known to fellow officers as "Tango Vulture", taken from their callsign prefix TV (Tango Victor) and the joke that they swoop to steal arrests from other officers while they carried out their duties.
Some of the officers involved in Road Wars are listed below. As a specialist unit, officers tended to appear in a couple of series, or just for one series, as either the camera just didn't happen to follow them during the time they were filming for the series, or that the officer's tenure had come up (which is after 3 years of being in the team, as it is a specialised unit) and they had left the team.
Vehicles
The Thames Valley Police unit operates high-specification, unmarked 3.2L V6 Vauxhall Omegas (now being replaced by unmarked 2.8L Turbo V6 Police Special Vauxhall Vectras) and is tasked with taking a proactive role in fighting crime especially targeted towards street robbers and burglars, but also undertaking general traffic policing (the officers are drawn from normal Roads Policing teams). The footage from this team is combined with video footage from police forces around the world (though largely UK and United States forces).
Devon & Cornwall Police
From Series 7, the series moved on to follow the Road Crime Unit and the front line Dog Squad of Devon and Cornwall Police. The Road Crime Unit operates marked BMW 3 Series along with unmarked 2.5L Ford Focus STs.
Transmissions
There have been eight series of Road Wars. Four special episodes have been shown including two American episodes (known as Road Wars USA), which aired in 2005, where British police from the series travel to the U.S. to see the difference in police and criminal behaviour and two Christmas specials shown in 2003 and 2004. Three compilation editions entitled "Ultimate Road Wars", featuring action from the first six series, first aired on Sky1 on 11 November, 13 November and 1 December 2008.
- Series 1 - 6 episodes Starting 26 July 2003
- Series 2 - 6 episodes Starting 21 June 2004
- Series 3 - 8 episodes starting 3 March 2005
- Series 4 - 8 episodes starting October 2006
- Series 5 - 20 episodes starting 8 May 2007
- Series 6 - 20 episodes starting - 29 July 2008
- Series 7 Part I - First 12 episodes started 17 February 2009 (narrated by Lee Boardman)
- Series 7 Part II - Last 8 episodes started from 23 November 2009 (narrated by Claire Goose)
Special
In a special two part series called Road Wars USA, Andy Samuels[2] and Chris Piggott spent a couple of months attached to a Gang Unit in Cicero, Illinois, near Chicago, to note how law enforcement is practised in the United States.
See also
- Street Wars (also known as Street Law)
- Police Interceptors a show following police in Essex and South Yorkshire, and made by the same producers as Road Wars.
- Traffic Cops, (sometimes listed as Motorway Cops and Car Wars) a similar programme shown on BBC One.
- Brit Cops, similar police documentary on Sky Livingit.
- Police Stop!, a show from the 1990s showing footage from police car dashboard cameras, with occasional presenter links.
- Police Camera Action!, a similar programme on ITV.
- Street Crime UK, a similar programme shown on Bravo.
External links
- Road Wars official website
- Road Wars on the Raw Cut TV website
- Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Road Wars at IMDb
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ http://www.road-wars.co.uk/interviews/TVP/interviewandy1.html
- Pages with broken file links
- All accuracy disputes
- Articles with disputed statements from January 2013
- Use dmy dates from June 2011
- 2000s British television series
- 2003 British television programme debuts
- 2010 British television programme endings
- 2010s British television series
- British crime television series
- Documentary television series about policing
- Sky television programmes
- Television shows set in England
