City of Vice

City of Vice is a British historical crime drama television series set in Georgian London and was first screened on 14 January 2008 on Channel 4. It is produced by Touchpaper Television part of the RDF Media Group. The series mixes fiction with fact following the fortunes of the famous novelist Henry Fielding (Ian McDiarmid) and his brother John (Iain Glen). Henry and John Fielding were magistrates of Westminster and the men who created the modern police force in Britain through the Bow Street Runners. The series was written by Clive Bradley and Peter Harness, whose scripts were nominated for a Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Series, 2008. It was directed by Justin Hardy and Dan Reed. The historical consultant was Hallie Rubenhold.

The show uses authentic historical research to tell the story of the two men battling to create a police force, 75 years before Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police. Henry Fielding’s memoirs and contemporary sources such as the Old Bailey Sessions Papers have been used to provide historical accuracy to the series.

The series uses innovative mapping sequences to follow the narrative and characters' progress, wherein John Rocque's map of 1746 is seen from above, becomes firstly 3D and ultimately merges with film sequences of the next scene to pick up the narrative tale.

The series won the Royal Television Society Judges' Award, 2008.

Read more about City Of Vice:  Episodes, Reception, DVD Release, Bow Street Runner – The Game

Famous quotes containing the words city of, city and/or vice:

    “There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    “Jews do not like the country, yes thank you, christians donot all like the city. Yes and thank you. There are no differences between the city and the country and very likely every one can be daily daily and by that timely.”
    —Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    “Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.”
    —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)