Rik Mayall, who died in 2014, was best known for his comic turns in The Young Ones, The New Statesman and Bottom. Now, however, his dramatic side is set to be given a wider airing, with a DVD release of the forgotten police drama Wolcott.
Wolcott, which starred George William Harris as maverick detective Winston Churchill Wolcott, was first aired on ITV over consecutive nights in January 1981. Intended as a UK answer to the popular high-budget US miniseries Roots, it is widely considered the first British miniseries and is also the first British police drama to feature a black actor in the starring role. Its subject matter was significantly grittier than much of the British fare of the time, focusing on the drugs trade in London and racial tension both on the streets and within the police force.
To that end, Mayall played a racist police officer who, in one clip, is seen antagonising Wolcott. Mayall was not the only actor from the alternative comedy stable to appear in the series; Alexei Sayle and Keith Allen also appeared, as a Socialist Worker spokesman and a National Front heckler respectively.
In a letter published in the Guardian in June 2014, Wolcott co-writer Patrick Carroll expressed disappointment that the series had been largely forgotten. “My abiding recollection of Rik Mayall is of his straight-acting turn as the virulently racist PC Bonham opposite George Harris as the black DC Wolcott in the 1981 ITV police drama serial of the latter name,” he wrote. “Although Wolcott – the first UK production to be broadcast in the miniseries format – has been rather airbrushed from the history of British television, I tend to remember it because, with Barry Wasserman, I co-wrote it.”
