Z-Cars Watt), James Ellis (Bert Lynch) and Brian Blessed ("Fancy" Smith). Barlow and Watt were later spun into a separate series "Softly, Softly". The title comes from the radio call signs allocated by Lancashire Constabulary. Lancashire police divisions were lettered from north to the south: "A" Division (based in Ulverston) was the detached part of Lancashire at the time around Barrow-in-Furness, "B" Division was Lancaster, and so on. Letters further into the alphabet were in the south around the Manchester and Liverpool areas. (See also the Wikipedia page about Home Office radio.) The TV series took the non-existent signs Z-Victor 1
Z-Cars estates that had sprung up across Britain in the post-war years, and its ageing neighbour "Seaport". The stories revolve around pairs of officers patrolling that week. Riding on changing social attitudes and television, the social realism, with interesting stories, garnered popularity for "Z Cars". It was initially somewhat unpopular with real-life police, who disliked the sometimes unsympathetic characterisation of officers. Being set in the North of England helped give "Z Cars" a regional flavour when most BBC dramas were set in the south. It directly challenged the BBC's popular police drama "Dixon of Dock Green", which at that point had