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 and/or vice:

    But they who give straight judgements to strangers and to those of the land and do not transgress what is just, for them the city flourishes and its people prosper.
    Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)

    The foundation of empire is art & science. Remove them or degrade them, & the empire is no more. Empire follows art & not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.
    William Blake (1757–1827)