Emergency Services from the Screen to Seen

Even if you have not interacted with the emergency services in real life, you have probably seen them on your film and television screens. In this month’s blog we explore the impact the emergency services have had on our screens and how these interpretations compare to the day-to-day realities of this type of work. We’ll be focusing on the Police, Fire and Ambulance Services.

When you think of Police on your screen it is usually a particular part of the service that gets seen; that’s right, detectives. Who doesn’t love a nice Sunday evening in front of the TV watching a detective drama? Whether you are a fan of Midsomer Murders, Vera, Inspector Morse, Line of Duty or the many others out there. Of course, with all these shows there is a certain amount of creative licence and they don’t necessarily show the nitty gritty of police work day to day.

If you wanted more of a bobby on the beat type of affair then look no further than The Bill, the popular ITV drama that ended back in 2010 is loved by many and rewatched regularly. The big screen showing for British policing is Hot Fuzz, from the Cornetto Trilogy, about a Met Police officer who is sent to a little village for being “too good” at his job. If you wanted to see a more old-fashioned style of policing Heartbeat is the show for you, set in North Yorkshire in the 1960s.

An unusual but very famous Police item can be seen on Doctor Who in the form of th Tardis which is camouflaged as a Police Box. Some people may even think of the Tardis before the old-fashioned police boxes that you can see across the country, (we have one here in Sheffield city centre that is green).

 The fire service has more of a family friendly focus on the big and little screens, with everyone’s favourite firefighter, Fireman Sam, being at the front of most people’s minds. Originally a children’s programme starting in 1987 and being rebooted in the early 2000s, continuing to this day, with films such as The Great Fire of Pontypandy.  Although fire prevention did not seem to be top of the list in the Welsh seaside town and Sam added mountain rescue, the coastguard, RNLI and even the Police to his band of emergency services. It is not really a realistic representation of the fire service.

Before Sam there was Trumpton (bet some of you are singing Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cutherbert, Dibble and Grubb, in your head now), from the 1960s it was a stop motion children’s tv programme and it incredibly only had one series.  With the little fictional towns fire crew being a prominent part of life’s going on, but to the annoyance of their fire chief, Captain Flack, never called out for any actual fires.

Paw Patrol has a mixture of emergency services featured, but the most recognised two are Chase the Police Dog and Marshall the Fire Dog. Marshall may not be the best representation of the fire service, as he is the clumsiest of all the pups.  If you want a more adult feel, then the ITV show London’s Buring that ended in 2002 showed the day to day lives of members of the London Fire Brigade. From chip pan fires to ones a paint factory. The show actually used real life firefighters from Bermondsey fire station where they filmed, as extras.

Our last emergency service seems to be less of a focus for fictional dramas, compared to its other two counterparts (but is seen in factual shows like 24 hours in A & E and Ambulance). Probably when we think of the ambulance service on the small screen we think of BBC’s Casualty, which even invoked a spin off show called Holby City (although this last aired in 2022). It is a staple of Saturday night television to this day, with the lives and loves of Holby City Hospital staff intertwining with their jobs. It is the longest running primetime medical drama series in the world. If we head across the pond there was the medical drama ER, set in Cook County Hospital in Chicago, which again followed the lives of the staff there, finishing in 2009. Grey’s Anatomy seems to have taken up the mantel again with the everyday lives of medical staff from the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital (later changer to the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital). Still running and about to be on its 22nd season it is clearly very popular and people obviously like the format.

Having looked at the on-screen personas of the emergency services I think we can gather that they are not a real representation of the everyday lives of the personnel, but that does not make it any less enjoyable to watch.

By Rosie Norrell

Learning and Communities Co-ordinator