Investigating The Detectives
Published: Sunday 13th April 2025
Long before the birth of what became known as alternative comedy the same ethos was booming on the folk club circuit, with the likes of John Dowie, Victoria Wood and Billy Connolly fine purveyors of between-song-bonhomie. In 1969 Jasper Carrott, real name Robert Norman Davis, opened his own club - called The Boggery - in Solihull, where he was able to master his craft to the extent that his stand-up overtook the songs.
In 1975 he teamed up with ELO frontman Jeff Lynne and drummer Bev Bevan for Funky Moped, a hit novelty single that got to number five in the charts. Carrott's stand-up was largely observational: his trademark routine, which he developed over many years and still uses today, was to read out ludicrous car insurance claims:
Going to work at 7 am this morning, I drove out of my drive straight into a bus - the bus was five minutes early!
Carrott eventually brought his stand-up to the small screen, starring in An Audience With Jasper Carrott and several further specials for London Weekend Television before moving to the BBC to make satirical sketch show Carrott's Lib. A string of series followed, including Carrott Confidential and Canned Carrott, which also featured Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. Detectives Dave and Bob were introduced as recurring characters in these series and quickly grew in popularity.
Before The Detectives was spun-off into its own series, the BBC aired another police parody. Launched in 1991 and written by Kim Fuller and future Green Wing creator Victoria Pile, Lazarus & Dingwall starred Stephen Frost and Mark Arden, who performed on the alternative comedy circuit as The Oblivion Boys. Similar in nature to American sitcom Police Squad!, the show used fast paced gags, puns and slapstick.
The Detectives premiered two years later, and while the humour was just as sublimely silly, it was really a showcase for the double act of Carrott and actor Robert Powell, otherwise best known for playing the title role in Jesus of Nazareth (1977). Casting a comic against a straight actor is a common enough ploy in sitcoms, but what elevates The Detectives is the chemistry the duo share; evident right from their first scene, when they enter a crime scene bickering about the drive there.
The show was written by Steve Knight and Mike Whitehill, two employees of Celador, a production company co-owned by Carrott. In 1998, the three struck gold when, along with colleague David Briggs, they devised Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.
Carrott and Powell play Bob Louis and, in tribute to the aforementioned fellow Celador staffer, Dave Briggs, two Metropolitan Police detectives promoted well beyond their level of competency. It's the classic sitcom setup of an odd couple and their childish, brotherly relationship is the spine of the series. One of the funniest aspects of the show is the frequent and joyous exploitation of Carrott's bemused hangdog facial expressions as he reacts to the ridiculousness around him. One particularly perfect example can be found in the Series 3 episode DC Of Love, where he discovers Briggs in full S&M gear in preparation for their undercover assignment in a bondage club in Soho - Louis, misunderstanding the brief, has instead worn a cardigan from M&S.
This use of exquisite visual humour must be credited in no small part to Series 1-3's visionary producer/director, Ed Bye. Fresh from helming the second series of Bottom at the start of the run, he had previously produced the likes of Red Dwarf, Girls On Top, and Detectives originator, Canned Carrott, to great success. At the time of writing, his most recent credits include the equally daft murder mystery spoof Murder, They Hope, which is similarly laden with visual gags.
George Sewell, who was best known for playing hardnosed police officers in older cop shows like Special Branch and The Sweeney, parodied his onscreen persona by playing their boss, Superintendent Frank Cottam, who, despite despairing at the duo's antics, keeps assigning them to cases as they do always seem to come through in the end. Tony Selby had a recurring guest role through the series as desk sergeant Nozzer.
Many guest stars appeared as both suspects and red herrings throughout the five series of the sitcom, including the much-missed Barry Cryer, Pink Panther star Herbert Lom, Rocky Horror Show icon Richard O'Brien, actress Jerry Hall, Nightingales actor James Ellis and soap star Amanda Mealing. John Nettles and Terence Alexander even reprise their roles from Bergerac in Series 1 crossover episode Studs. Comedians Lee Cornes, Mark Steel, Mike Reid and Jimmy Tarbuck also appeared in episodes across the series.
Knight and Whitehill frequently used the building blocks of farce when structuring episodes. This is notable in Series 2's Flash, in which the hunt for a notorious flasher begins with the duo piecing together their drunken antics the night before at the Met Gala:
LOUIS: Why am I wearing red lipstick?
BRIGGS: Because maroon would have clashed with your eye shadow!
One of the writers' great strengths is not only the ability to write wonderfully silly jokes that wouldn't have looked out of place in the most internationally lauded Hollywood spoofs, but wringing every ounce of humour out of any given premise. This Series 4 exchange, from the episode Mine's A Large One, comes as Briggs and Louis are questioning a suspect:
LOUIS: We don't care how fancy your briefs are, we've caught you with your trousers down!
Then, as they present a piece of paper containing what they think is a message from a crime boss called Len:
BRIGGS: We're talking about Len's Cleaner, who you were instructed to contact.
SUSPECT: It's a shopping list. When you picked me up, I was on my way to the chemist to pick up some contact lens cleaner.
Knight and Whitehill wrapped up the series with a Christmas special in 1997, in which Cottam - suffering from nervous exhaustion after years of Briggs and Louis's escapades - disappears, and they track him down to the Canadian wilderness.
In 2002, Knight created All About Me for Carrott, a sitcom about a multi-racial Birmingham family with a severely disabled son that also starred Meera Syal, Nina Wadia and Ryan Cartwright. It ran for three series. He has since written an eclectic range of films including 2002 drama Dirty Pretty Things, for which he received an Oscar nomination, Eastern Promises and Locke. However, by far his biggest solo success is the internationally lauded BBC period gangster drama Peaky Blinders.
A decade later Carrott starred in his own one-off sketch show, The One Jasper Carrott - the third in a run of one-offs that also included episodes fronted by Ronnie Corbett and Lenny Henry - in which he and Powell reunited as Briggs and Louis for a final sketch. More than two decades later, The Detectives stands up remarkably well - surely one of the funniest of the 1990s - and must surely be considered an underrated gem accordingly.
Where to start?
Series 1, Episode 6 - Going Home
The final episode of the first series puts Louis and Briggs undercover in a club to catch gangster Danny Kane, played by EastEnders alumnus Leslie Grantham. To assist them, they bring in Detective Simpson (Barry Cryer), a wonderful addition to the central double act. The episode also features the first screen appearance of Carrott's daughter, Lucy Davis.
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Love comedy? Find out moreThe Detectives - The Complete Collection
Accidentally promoted far beyond their level of competence, Detective Constables Bob Louis and David Briggs stumble from crime to crime relying on a unique blend of intuition, hunches and inspired guesses... all of them hopelessly wrong. Incompetent, inept and usually in trouble, these bungling bobbies seem more likely to catch a cold than any Mr. Big, but somehow Superintendant Cottam always finds himself awarding them commendations.
Includes all 31 episodes from all 5 series of the 1990s BBC comedy starring Jasper Carrott and Robert Powell.
First released: Monday 15th October 2018
DVD- Distributor: BBC
- Region: 2 & 4
- Discs: 6
- Minutes: 900
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: BBCDVD4337
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