This live post-war television play dramatises a Scotland Yard investigation into armed crime.
This single play was a live reconstruction of an episode from Scotland Yard’s very real fight against armed criminals in post-war Britain, with rationing causing an explosion in the black market economy. As no recording was ever made, the specific details of the case being dramatised are not known.
Broadcast less than a year after the post-war resumption of the BBC Television Service, Armed Robbery is a typical example of the live ‘reconstruction’ format popular in early broadcasting. These programmes blended documentary authority with dramatic tension, often using factual accounts from police files or recent historical events as their basis. Transmitted live from Alexandra Palace and never recorded for posterity, the play now exists only as a billing in programme archives. The generic title suggests it may have been intended as part of a recurring strand of crime-focused docu-dramas, a popular genre in the fledgling years of television.
Broadcast: BBC, 1 Episode, 26 June 1947
Written by: Robert Barr
Producer: Robert Barr
Main Cast: Unknown
