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''The Vice'' was a British crime drama that aired on Creator/{{ITV}} from 1999-2003, centred around London's Metropolitan Police Vice Unit run by DI Pat Chappel (Ken Stott). The Vice Unit was small, underfunded and generally treated with derision by other forces, while Pat Chappel and his team of young detectives struggled to get a result, largely against the odds. Pat Chappel himself was a conflicted character, whose compassion for the people he worked with daily often led him to become emotionally involved in the cases, quite often with devastating results. Ken Stott left the series in 2003; his role was taken over by his former second-in-command Sgt Joe Robinson.

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!!Contains examples of:
* ArchEnemy: DS Frank Vickers.
* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: The female vice officers in season 5 - Lorraine is blonde, Cheryl a brunette, Kirsty red-haired.
* DespairEventHorizon: Pat has one when he Cheryl is about to be gangraped by prison officers but he cannot react. He later has another when he discovers the child photographer whose home he has infiltrated is abusing and filming his own daughter. He goes into an UnstoppableRage and nearly beats the man to death before slumping to the ground and going nearly comatose.
* {{Expy}}: Pat is very similar to Ken Stott's more famous officer of the law, {{Series/Rebus}} as well as the character of Red who he plays in the detective series ''Messiah.''
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Pat is Choleric, Cheryl is Melancholic, Joe is Phlegmatic, Dougie is Sanguine.
* HannibalLecture: Vickers delivers one of these to Pat Chappel when [[spoiler: Pat has framed him for rape with the help of Pat's girlfriend]]. "I've got to hand it you. I would have just used some tom, but you Pat, you used the woman you love".
* KavorkaMan: Pat is short, stocky and has a less than attractive face, but is constantly hooking up with attractive women. That said, he suffers from a very pronounced case of WhenHeSmiles.
* PyrrhicVictory: The end results of most episodes that weren't downright failures. If the team managed to get a conviction, it was often only at the expense of losing a greater target, suffering the loss of a team member or playing extremely fast and lose with police procedures.
* RedLightDistrict: The setting for most of the series.
* WhamEpisode: The start of series 5 'Hooked'. PC Sheryl Hutchins goes undercover [[spoiler: but is caught by a pimp and forcibly addicted to drugs. Pat Chappel goes undercover to rescue her, but ends up murdering the pimp with a video camera capturing the entire act. Pat Chappel ends up in prison and Sheryl spends the rest of the series trying to recover from her addiction]]
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