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:

    “Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God!
    He, whose word cannot be broken, Form’d for thee his own abode:
    On the rock of ages founded, What can shake thy sure repose?
    With salvation’s walls surrounded Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.”
    —John Newton (1725–1807)

    “A city on whom plenty held full hand,
    For riches strewed herself even in her streets;
    Whose towers bore heads so high they kissed the clouds,
    And strangers ne’er beheld but wondered at.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
    —Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)