Fabian of Scotland Yard [ 1 ] is a British police procedural television series based on the real-life memoirs of Scotland Yard detective Robert Fabian , produced by Trinity Productions, with episodes purchase by the BBC and broadcast between November and February It is considered the earliest police procedural to be shown on British TV, sharing many points of commonality with the U.
The series was broadcast in the U. Apart from Bruce Seton , who played the eponymous Fabian in every episode, the series had relatively few recurring characters in comparison with later British police series.
No other cast member featured in more than six episodes, as the particular skills of their character were called on to assist in a case germane to their speciality, such as the laboratory expert, the psychiatrist , the pathologist or the graphologist.
There were guest appearances from well-known actors such as Kathleen Byron , Elspet Gray , Kieron Moore and Michael Craig , but for the most part the cast consisted of relative unknowns. Fabian of the Yard was one of the earliest BBC-shown British drama series to be shot on film, with each episode featuring voiceover narration from Seton.
Each case was a dramatisation of a genuine crime which had taken place in the London area between the s and the early s, usually, although not invariably, a murder. Many of the cases featured had made national headlines in their day, such as "Little Girl", based on the murder of an East London schoolgirl which had shocked the country in Each episode finished with an epilogue in which a shot of Seton at his desk dissolved into a shot of the real-life Fabian at the same desk, who then explained to viewers what had happened to the real criminal from the case they had just been watching.
