STRATFORD JOHNS: Though as a jobbing actor Stratford Johns, who died on January 29th aged 76, played many parts, his bulky physique and vaguely threatening face trapped him in one role that made television history and social history, by bringing a more realistic view of police behaviour to the screen. That role was the blunt, ruthless, but honest and effective detective Charles Barlow in the BBC series Z Cars and its successor, Softly, Softly, with audiences of up to 15 million.
Before Z Cars went on screen in 1962, police series followed the style of Dixon Of Dock Green, featuring Jack Warner as the kindly uniformed Sergeant Dixon - invariably calm and fair in his dealings with the public and even with villains, always prepared to help old ladies across the street and dispense quiet words of wisdom to the rebellious young.
Created by Ted (later Lord) Willis, Dixon reflected how the public were expected to regard policemen.
But the 1960s brought a new, rebellious public mood, and, correctly or incorrectly, Dixon began to seem a tool of the Establishment, as seen through rose-tinted spectacles. Something more gritty was called for. The BBC found Merseyside; the new phenomenon in the fight against crime, the patrol car; and Barlow.
Troy Kennedy Martin created the character after being bed-ridden, when he had the chance to listen to police patrol-car messages on his radio. At the beginning of the first episode, Stratford Johns was shown at the graveside of a murdered colleague, swapping flip and cynical comments about life, death and police work that Dixon would never have made in such circumstances. The death was shown as one of the reasons why the police needed the new idea of the patrol car: they were shown as tough men having to cultivate a tougher facade to be able to do their jobs, and Stratford Johns looked and sounded as if he would cheerfully bully, blackmail and cajole if he had to.
On a limited budget and with much location shooting, Z Cars and its star won popular and intellectual acclaim. The Radio Times once argued that, as a piece of social and political history, Z Cars was on a par with the plays of Arnold Wesker and John Osborne, and the novels of Alan Sillitoe.
Before the first episode, Stratford Johns was meticulous in studying how the police operated, and the public often believed that he was a real detective. After a bomb scare in a department store, a woman shopper gasped in relief as she saw Stratford Johns approaching. Realising that it would take too long to disillusion her, the actor touched his hat and went on his way. That sort of thing, he said, happened to him all the time, but he accepted being typecast and enjoyed the benefits, which became greater as the programmes went on.
There were more than 800 episodes of the various series featuring the cantankerous Barlow - in 1966, the "Newtown" of Z Cars was succeeded by the regional crime squad setting of Softly, Softly, which from 1967 to 1976 became Softly, Softly: Task Force. From 1971 to 1975, the character had a separate life as "Thamesford's" head of CID in the spin-offs Barlow At Large and Barlow. In the process, Inspector Barlow was promoted to det chief superintendent, and Stratford Johns acquired homes in London and Suffolk.
He was born on September 22nd, 1925, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the son of an engine driver, Sidney Johns, and Esther Stratford. Educated at St Charles College in Natal, and serving in the South African Navy in the second World War, he made his stage début in the melodrama White Cargo at Southend Hippodrome in 1948, and then for 4½ years was in repertory in Southend, Blythe in Northumberland, Sheerness in Kent and Kendal in Westmorland. He once remarked in the days of his fame as Barlow: "I do not consider it my fault that one of these theatres is now a warehouse, another was flooded and sunk and the other two were converted, I believe, into fish-and-chip shops."
His first London stage role - prophetically, as a policeman - was in the play Live Like Pigs (1958). He was part of the new wave at the Royal Court Theatre when he appeared in Serjeant Musgrave's Dance in 1960, and West End appearances included the middlebrow thriller Who Saw Him Die? at the Haymarket Theatre (1975) and Annie at the Criterion (1978), as the millionaire benefactor Daddy Warbucks.
In films, Stratford Johns started as a fireman in Burnt Evidence in 1954, and usually succeeded in functionary roles, playing the sergeant in The Night My Number Came Up (1955), a security guard in the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955), and policemen in Tiger In The Smoke (1956), Who Done It? (1956), The Long Arm (1956) and The Plank (1967).
In his later years, with the British film industry going through a lean phase and his own waistline and jawline becoming too flabby for hard-faced cops, the parts open to him became fewer. He featured in one of the more unconsciously funny horror films, Ken Russell's The Lair Of The White Worm (1988), in which the characters screamed and shouted when what was obviously a large white plastic balloon appeared. He also played an actor playing Herod in Russell's epicene version of the Salome story, Salome's Last Dance (1988), set in a Wildean brothel. He tended now to be typecast unkindly in degenerate parts.
In 1955, Stratford Johns married Nanette Parsons; she, their three daughters and son survive him.
Alan Stratford Johns: born 1925; died, January 2002