Dixon of Dock Green - Bringing Dixon Down To Earth

Bringing Dixon Down To Earth

In 1988, a screenplay called The Black and Blue Lamp was shown on BBC TV, in which two identical criminals named Tom Riley, one from the 1950 film (in which Dixon dies) and one from the 1980s, swap places in time. The one from the 1980s experiences the soft policing of the Dixon TV series. Meanwhile, the one from 1950 experiences the very harsh policing of the 1980s, represented by a parody of violent police procedurals called The Filth. There, he discovers that the Dixon of the divergent Dock Green timeline, who has also just been killed, was as bad as any copper could be.

One of Dixon's closing monologues from Dixon of Dock Green was recycled for the final scene of Ashes to Ashes in 2010. Like The Black and Blue Lamp, characters in Ashes to Ashes and its predecessor, Life on Mars, were seemingly sent into different eras of policing. Moreover, Dixon's 'resurrection' for Dixon of Dock Green, after having been killed in The Blue Lamp, parallels the stories of the principal characters in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, having been explained in the final episode.