As the Radio Times declares this week one of the most iconic detectives in British television history will shortly be returning to the screen following UKTV's ordering of a new six-part re-boot of the '80s classic Jersey-based detective drama Bergerac. The new series is due to air sometime next year but as yet there seems to be little information on who will be replacing the iconic John Nettles in the leading role as Jim Bergerac. So it still seems to be early days - but not quite early enough to quash rumours that Post Covid-19 Jersey really might welcome the enhanced profile a Bergerac re-boot could bring to the Island and its visitor economy.
Given that the Isle of Man inevitably ends up copying Jersey's lead at some stage the news left us wondering what sort of modern police or detective series might the Isle of Man have a scriptwriter create to provide a similar potential boost for our own visitor economy? Especially given that the recent ITV series Maryland is largely famous for pretending to be about the Isle of Man whilst ostensibly being filmed on the Howth Peninsula near Dublin and the Isle of Wight. Of further note is, of course, that in the last ten years the only film credit the Isle of Man remains vaguely famous is as the location for Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby's quite wonderful detective spoof MIndhorn - a film about a Bergerac like '80s TV Detective series featuring Isle of Man Detective Bruce MIndhorn, and the return of its lead actor to the Isle of Man following the announcement by local murder suspect Paul Melly that he will only speak to Mindhorn in the mistaken belief that TV's Bruce Mindhorn was actually a real person.
Whilst we suggest that after a rather inglorious period of fronting numerous VAT dodging b-movies the true zenith of the Isle of Man TV & film industry should probably be definitively marked by a pure spoof like Barratt and Farnaby's Mindhorn the speculation that some sort of modern Manx Detective series might create a Bergerac effect for Isle of Man tourism made us set about imagining what sort of character and series may well do the trick.
So here we go ..
Before we began we naturally felt compelled to do the obligatory trawl of Manx social media (Twitter/X Facebook, IOM Newspapers comments & ManxForums etc) to collate the common factors that any Manx Police or Detective Series would need to embrace in order to provide an accurate portrayal of what we all seem to think goes on in the Isle of Man.
Those being:
Secretive civil servants
Free masonry
Nepotism
Government cover ups
Backhanders
Money laundering
Secretive police practices
White washing & cover ups
Cannan Fodder
Here we propose a six series pilot charting the sad story of Frank Cannan a retired Manx police officer who sadly lost a leg in a freak horse tram accident when he wrestled a mugger to the ground on a busy re-designed Douglas promenade. Pensioned out of the Isle of Man Constabulary due to his injury, and having been refused compensation by the DOI on a technicality devised by sneaky civil servant Barry Kelly who is now married to his ex-wife, Cannan finally secures a Private Investigators (PI) license in order to pay the bills. However due to a lack of work arising from the perception that no crime ever happens in the Isle of Man Cannan eventually turns to the booze and spends most of the next five years in the Nags Head wallowing in self pity. At home Cannan manages to half soberly carve a secret compartment into his wooden leg into which he installs a hidden voice recorder to capture information relayed to him by friends still inside the force.
Unlike sunny Jersey's exuberant Jim Bergerac there is no classic 1949 Triumph sports car for poor Cannan and when Brian Cowin DOI head of buses ban's his mobility scooter from the bus meaning that he can no longer attend the scenes of the infrequent crimes he is asked to investigate, Cannan decides to take the law into his own hands.
Meanwhile local drug baron Kevin Crellin contacts the now immobile Cannan with claims that he is paying off a cabal of local freemasons who are also money laundering Tynwald Members. He claims that Cannan's mobility scooter has been banned from the bus by emergency powers in Tynwald because they want him out of the way and confined to home so he can't cause any trouble for the Manx Establishment. Cannan tries to find the Hansard records of who voted for the mobility scooter ban to expose those responsible but the minutes have gone missing and the secretary in the Clerk of Tynwald's office has disappeared on a family holiday to Morecambe.
Cannan picks up a secret conversation on his leg recorder from the Chief Constable that suggests that he was visiting Morecambe the same weekend that the Tynwald secretary went meeting. The next five episodes proposed will cover Cannan's attempts to bring the Chief Constable and Tynwald to account while getting his bus pass back and proving Kevin Crellin's claims of Tynwald bribes and corruption.
