TV's best bad police officers: From Craig Parkinson in Line of Duty to Idris Elba's Luther

As Jed Mercurio’s police drama returns to our screens, Gerard Gilbert looks at the worst-behaving officers on television

Clockwise from top left: Happy Valley, Luther, Line of Duty, and Bodyguard (BBC)

From Dirty Harry, Bad Lieutenant and Orson Welles in Touch of Evil to Serpico, Internal Affairs and LA Confidential, movies have a rich tradition of murderous, corrupt or simply rule-bending cops. Television not so much.

With advertisers or state regulators to placate, TV drama was late to portray the police as anything but upstanding – and Jack Warner’s eternally reassuring George Dixon in Dixon of Dock Green was the benchmark of probity right into the mid-1970s, a decade notorious for real-life bad practices from the blue-light brigade.

The subscriber-led television era has led to the prominence of the anti-hero and a far greater willingness of viewers to embrace bad cops, whether they’re simply too vigorous with their pursuit and questioning or out-and-out criminals on the take or murderously in bed with gangsters.

Leading the way, if only for its sheer volume of dodgy and downright dangerous detectives, is Jed Mercurio’s BBC1 drama Line of Duty, which returns at the end of March. It’s a cop show where nobody is safe and nobody can be trusted.

While we wait to see the latest twists and turns for AC-12, here’s a Top 20 of TV’s worst-behaving police officers.

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