Series / Cracker

Robbie Coltrane as Fitz

"I drink too much, I smoke too much, I gamble too much. I am too much."

—Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald

This British Crime and Punishment Series was originally broadcast in the "Television Serial" format (also used for, e.g., Doctor Who before 1996). The main character, Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, played by Robbie Coltrane, was a psychologist who did profiling for the Manchester police force. Of course, he usually ended up confronting the criminal and solving the crime solo (though a few times he makes the situation a whole lot worse). Aside from his grouchy, misanthropic demeanour, he was massively overweight and addicted to alcohol, tobacco and gambling. In his spare time, he also enjoyed a bit of Unresolved Sexual Tension with his sidekick, Jane "Panhandle" Penhaligon.

There have been 10 stories, originally transmitted as two or three episodes each. There is considerable continuity from one story to the next (unusual in Television Serial format shows) and watching them out of sequence would be inadvisable. An 11th, stand-alone episode was aired in 2006.

There was a sanitised U.S. remake in which the main character was fairly slender, drank moderate amounts of wine and lived in a spacious, airy apartment.

Not to be confused with The Cracker, who is a computer criminal or the British Comic Cracker.

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Provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Several of the criminals are victims of these.
• Accent Slip-Up: When Fitz gets very drunk or very emotional (or both), his educated Scottish English turns into full-on Weegie.
• Anonymous Public Phone Call:
  • In "The Mad Woman In The Attic" part 2: a man, claiming to be a priest, calls the police from a railway station payphone claiming to be able to confirm a man suffering from amnesia after seemingly jumping off a train is the Serial Killer "Sweeny", as he told him he murdered a woman and dumped her body in a river in confession. The police are able to track the phone call to the platform but by then the caller has departed on the train. Searching the river the do find another body. As Fitz quickly figures the caller is in fact Sweeny, who is trying to remove the one witness to his crime.
  • Subverted in "To Say I Love You". Whilst on the run from the police Sean attempts to do this by using a payphone to contact the police about arresting his girlfriend and partner, however, his speech impediment means he's unable to even start the sentence, and failing to do so makes him so angry he just storms off.
  • Floyd Malcolm the Serial Rapist of "Men Should Weep" uses this to contact Fitz. First calling him on his radio show to try to get him to confirm his decision that he should just kill his next victim to avoid the police identifying him (and so he can pass the blame onto him), and then later at his home to confirm he took "his advice."
  • Janice, Fitz’s Stalker with a Crush from "True Romance", uses one of the university’s phone boxes to contact his radio show after it’s announced he's been taken off the investigation into the men she's been murdering to get his attention. The police manage to track the call, but despite Fitz's efforts to keep her on the line, they just miss her. Later, after Janice kidnaps Fitz's son Mark, they pre-emptively try to avert this by having officers watching all the public phones in the area, only for her to instead use her landline, knowing they would track it, so she can meet Fitz face to face.
• Anti-Hero: Fitz and Beck could also count at first
• Anyone Can Die: DCI Bilborough and DS James Beck.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Played seriously in "True Romance" where Janice's spree is motivated by the fact that she was the only one of her family not molested by her father (because, as Fitz points out at the end, her father realised she was likely to tell someone about it, whereas her sisters wouldn't out of shame).
• Armoured Closet Gay: In "Best Boys", Stuart Grady joined the army, married, and had a child to try and cover the fact that he is gay. Then he meets Bill Nash...
• Asshole Victim: Several including a loan shark, a homophobe and a ruthless journalist
• Attempted Rape: Floyd Malcolm attempts to rape Judith.
• Author Tract: There's some political elements, like the deranged, homeless Falklands veteran, and much Margaret Thatcher-bashing, read with a certain easy authenticity by "Red Robbie" Coltrane. Fitz's occasional invective against religion comes off this way, too.
• Awful Wedded Life: Abounds, given the genre. Fitz and Judith are the most obvious example. Also, the Franklins from "Best Boys", so much so that DCI Wise initially thinks Mr Franklin is the murderer. Speaking of which, Wise's own marriage is not exactly a bed of roses, though he seems to be happier than his wife. Averted by Bilborough, who is Happily Married.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Subverted with Albie, and lampshaded by Fitz:
  Fitz: Your cat had kittens. Why didn't you drown them?
  Albie: (scoffs)
  Fitz: You kill human beings, why not a few kittens?
  Albie: They hadn't done me any harm!
• "Bang!" Flag Gun: In an amusing insert to an episode, Fitz is "being fired" in a test to see how a real manager would fire an employee. Fitz gets so distraught, in character, that he pretends to commit suicide with one of these guns.

• Berserk Button: Bilborough and his family, as tragically evinced in To Be a Somebody, but children in general seem a sore point. In "One Day a Lemming Will Fly", even Beck thinks Bilborough goes too far browbeating a witness who didn't come forward sooner.
• Bitter Wedding Speech: In "The New Terror", Fitz humiliates his daughter at her wedding by listing her previous boyfriends. This is the daughter he's seen doting on in previous episodes when she was still a little girl.
• Burger Fool: In the last two episodes, Mark is shown working in an Austrian-themed fast-food chain.
• Burn Baby Burn: Jane Penhaligon burns her clothes after she's been raped, causing Fitz (who's unaware of the reason) to quip that burning a bra is "a bit too Sixties".
• Butt-Monkey: DC Skelton. Because of his newbie status, he is often talked down to, yelled at, given menial tasks and has blame for other cops' screw-ups shifted on him. He reacts correspondingly.
• Byronic Hero: Fitz. Best summed up by this conversation:
  Thomas: Why do you drink so much?
  Fitz: I like it.
  Thomas: And smoke so much?
  Fitz: I like it.
  Thomas: And you gamble as well?
  Fitz: Yes, I like it.
• Captain Obvious. Penhaligon storms out of her superior's office after being turned down for a promotion, and when Fitz greets her as 'Panhandle' screams "IT'S PENHALIGON YOU FAT, STUPID BASTARD!" Expert psychologist that he is, Fitz concludes that she is upset.
• Character Filibuster: Fitz, forced by the court to attend Gamblers Anonymous, gives a self-justifying rant as the reason he is a compulsive gambler:
  I'll tell you why. Because when I win, when I'm holding my winnings in my hand, it proves one thing: that I WAS RIGHT! The teachers who said I would never amount to anything, the employers who told me I was lucky they let me have a job at all, the wife who belittled me for not earning as much as the man next door AND THEN SLEPT WITH HIM, they're all wrong, and I'm RIGHT! All those tut-tutting puritans who criticise you for having a bet, they're just gutless SHITES who don't have the spine to take a risk, who play safe and make a virtue out of their own COWARDICE, they're wrong and you're RIGHT! It's not us that has a problem, it's THEM!
• *Click* Hello: When Panhandle breaks into Beck's house and waits for him.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Fitz is a brilliant psychologist, and very poor at navigating his own mess of a family life.
• Conviction by Contradiction:
  • In one episode, Fitz deduces that someone is the murderer, as they claimed to be a student and "you don't dress like a student" (because obviously, all students dress exactly the same way).
  • In another episode, he not only deduces that someone is a closet gay, but also his alibis, because when questioned he said "I was at home with my girlfriend" rather than "I was at home with Lesley"—thus showing he was afraid of saying that his girlfriend's name was a potential man's name and letting Fitz think he was at home with a man (because, of course, everybody normally says "I was at home with [name]" to complete strangers, despite the stranger not having a clue who [name] would be). But given the way it ends, it may be a way of showing that Fitz isn't infallible and can make mistakes - potentially dangerous ones.
• Cooldown Hug: The tall, heavyset Fitz grabs a hysterical, furious and much smaller young man in a Bear Hug, indicating that he's prepared to headbutt the other man if he tries anything funny, and hanging onto him until he calms down.
• Cop Killer:
  • In "To Say I Love You", Sean and Tina murder DS Giggs.
  • In "To Be a Somebody", DCI Bilborough is stabbed to death by Albie Kinsella.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Sean Kerrigan over his girlfriend Tina in "To Say I Love You".
• Crime Reconstruction: In "Men Should Weep".
• Cult: The Villain of the Week in "The Big Crunch" is a leader of a fringe pseudo-Christian cult. Keeping with the general realism of the series, they are much more silly-looking and boring than your average Religion of Evil in a TV show. They are still depraved fanatics.
• Dark and Troubled Past: All the guilty suspects have one of these. Actually, most of the innocent ones do too, and so do the police officers. Fitz' speciality is finding out about them.
• Deadly Nosebleed: In "To Say I Love You", Tina lures a loan shark into an alley so Sean can murder him, by sneaking up behind and cracking his skull with a brick. The impact is shown by his face going slack and a droplet of blood from his nose, before he collapses.
• Deadpan Snarker: Fitz and Wise most frequently. Penhaligon too, on occasion.
• Defective Detective: Fitz, an overweight alcoholic adulterer with a gambling addiction. For extra irony, he's a hypercompetent criminal psychologist who is capable of deducing anybody's issues in a heartbeat... including his own. He's just powerless to do anything about it. He does try, when it becomes obvious that his marriage and his relationship with his children is at stake. However, he finds he likes the way he is too much.
  • The actual detectives aren't necessarily that psychologically well-adjusted either.
• Did You Just Have Sex?. Penhaligon and Fitz enter the station and everyone somehow knows they've finally done it. Eventually Beck breaks the tension by asking "Who was on top?"
• Dirty Harriet: In "Brotherly Love", Penhaligon dresses as a prostitute hoping to lure a man believed to be murdering prostitutes. There's extra tension in the put-on because Penhaligon was still recovering from being raped by a colleague.
• Disposable Sex Worker: "Brotherly Love" features a serial killer (or killers) targeting prostitutes. On the one hand, the investigating police turn their full resources on the case; but they also misidentify the killer(s) throughout the episode.
• Divine Race Lift: Fitz is present during a natural childbirth. As the delivering mother is (obviously) in pain, he leans in and asks "Still think God is a woman?" (Of course, he is an archetypal Jerkass...).
• Drink-Based Characterization: Fitz will have a Scotch and dry (a whisky and dry ginger ale). Make it a double if someone else is paying.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • "One Day A Lemming Will Fly": The prime suspect seemingly tries to kill himself due to anguish over the victim's death (though Fitz implies that it was actually a cry for help).
  • "Brotherly Love": DS Jimmy Beck. He throws himself off a tall building after being overwhelmed by self-loathing from DCI Bilborough's death and his rape of DS Penhaligon.
  • Dean Saunders in The Big Crunch.
• Drives Like Crazy: Whenever Fitz pulls one of his Jerkass stunts on Panhandle, she likes to get back at him by driving extremely fast, while enjoying the expression on Fitz's face instead of looking at the road.
  • Also, Judith: "I like doing 60!"
• Dumbass No More: Mark, Fitz's son gets much smarter and more responsible during his Character Development in the latter half of the series. He's still a Book Dumb underachiver, but he is far from an utterly useless stoner he used to be in earlier episodes.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • Bilborough, having been fatally stabbed, gives a precise and detailed description of assailant.
  • Beck gets a confession from the killer...by handcuffing himself to the killer and leaping off a ten storey block of flats with him.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first serial is a straightforward whodunnit story; the first two have little focus on the character interactions and social commentary that became the show's hallmark. Besides Fitz, the cast are fairly one-dimensional, and the plots pretty conventional. One Day a Lemming Will Fly marked the show's point of departure.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Penhaligon's most distinctive feature is her curly red hair. In early episodes she has a bit of a fringe and keeps the rest of it tied back fairly loosely, sometimes with chunky scrunchies. On her first day back at work after being raped in Men Should Weep, she has it all scraped back in a tight plait. By True Romance, she's started wearing her hair in a ponytail again, but with the fringe since grown out, giving her a more mature look than she had at the beginning.
• Express Lane Limit: "To Be a Somebody" had Fitz get into an argument with a cashier while trying to use the express. His argument was that he technically only had two items (lager and some kind of junk food): he just just had multiple examples of each item.
• Faith–Heel Turn: "The Big Crunch". Fitz believes the leader of the Christian sect lost his faith and became angry at the meaninglessness of the universe.
• False Confession: Cassidy in One Day A Lemming Will Fly
  • Dean is bullied into giving one in The Big Crunch. He hangs himself in his cell after Fitz explains to him that he's confessed to murder.
• Famed In-Story: Fitz has his own radio show, and it is known publicly that he helps the police with murder investigations. In one episode the Chief Super tells Fitz they mainly keep him around for good publicity.
• Fat Slob: Fitz is heavily overweight, often disheveled and unkempt and fond of caustic comments. He is also alcoholic and has problems with habitual gambling. Good thing he's also the best profiler around.
• Finger Framing: Dean Saunders in The Big Crunch does this a lot; he's somewhat autistic and fixated on movies. Someone else comments on it at a church service that included the quote "We see the world through a glass, darkly": "You don't see the the world through a glass, darkly. You see it through your fingers".
  • Most other characters either make fun of him for it, or push his hands away, but there's a scene where Fitz sits down opposite him and copies him, which helps him get through to the lad.
• Flipping the Table: Fitz loses all his money gambling, so he asks the manager of the casino to do him the favour of banning him. He refuses. So Fitz walks over to some Asian gamblers and flips over their table, to their fury. The manager gives a deadpan, "You're banned".
• Food Slap: Fitz finally convinces Penhaligon to go out with him, only to take her to the same restaurant his estranged wife has taken her date in order to show her up. While the two are arguing, Penhaligon can be heard asking the waiter for a jug of water, which she calmly pours over Fitz's head before walking out.
  Fitz: (dripping wet) Anglo-Saxon foreplay.
• Forensic Drama
• Foster Kid: Bill Nash in "Best Boys".
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Most of the murderers are very damaged and shown some sympathy by Fitz but he also makes it clear to them that they are still responsible for their crimes.
• Gayngst: In "Best Boys", Stuart Grady joined the army, married, and had a child to try and cover the fact that he is gay. Given that this is a British Crime and Punishment Series, it doesn't end well.
• Genius Slob: Fitz
• Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: A darker version of this trope in "To Say I Love You". Sean and Tina murder a Loan Shark to avoid paying him, then have passionate sex (Fitz lampshades this trope when analyzing the crime for the police). The woman enjoys it so much, she encourages her boyfriend to go on a killing spree.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Played with and straight, depending on the circumstances. Fitz often performs both roles himself.
• Grave-Marking Scene: Averted in "A New Terror" where the soon-to-be-killer-of-the-week tries to visit his brother's grave (killed as a soldier in Northern Island), only to find the cemetery closed at that particular time due to government budget cuts.
• Hannibal Lecture: The various psychos that Fitz is called in to deal with have a tendency to try this on him. Given how Fitz is a first-rate professional psychologist and they usually aren't, he often ends up doing it right back to them, usually more successfully.
• Honey Trap: Tina from "To Say I Love You" and Janice from "True Romance" both use this trope to ensnare their victims.
• Hypocritical Humor: '"One Day A Lemming Will Fly" has a pompous coroner who upbraids Bilborough for supposed lack of professionalism... while dressed as Napoleon for a society ball. Neither Bilborough nor his colleagues are impressed:
  Coroner: He's been dead about 72 hours.
  Bilborough: Thank you.
  Coroner: [scoffing] And you're a DCI?
  Bilborough: [coldly polite] I knew it was a murder; I just wanted it confirmed and you've confirmed it. Thank you. *Beat* You can get along to your party now.
• Indirect Kiss: Fitz is briefing the detectives, one of whom makes an ignorant comment in his area of expertise. Fitz immediately jumps down the man's throat for this; but a few seconds before that same detective had passed a drink to Fitz's love interest DS Penhaligon, who drank from the bottle without wiping it first — just the kind of minor detail Fitz would notice.
• Insufferable Genius: Fitz is considered to be a complete bastard by his workmates at Greater Manchester Police, and has zero respect among his academic peers. But he is also very, very, very good at profiling.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence
  Fitz: What is death, Panhandle?
  Penhaligon: The finest aphrodisiac in the world, Dr. Fitzgerald!
• Interrupted Suicide: Subverted in a highly emotional scene in "Men Should Weep" when Panhandle talks to Jimmy Beck when he's on the roof. Given that he raped her, the whole confrontation is rather shocking. He goes through with it.
  I raped you. I'm so sorry. (beat, then he jumps)
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Averted. DCI Bilborough specifically tells a suspect (in the murder of a fellow detective) that no-one is going to touch her in case it jeopardises her being sent to prison. DS Beck is bawled out by DCI Wise when he beats a suspect.
• Jerk Ass Woobie: Most of the murderers, some of the Asshole Victims, Jimmy Beck and, arguably, Fitz himself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Fitz.
• Karma Houdini: The killer in One Day A Lemming Wil Fly and possibly Kenneth Trant in The Big Crunch. David Harvey was on his way to being this in Brotherly Love. But Jimmy Beck had other ideas.
• Kavorka Man: Fitz. Justified Trope - he is physically unattractive, but incredibly charismatic and witty.
  • The sect leader/headmaster in The Big Crunch. It turns out that his cult is based on women and girls who are attracted to him.
• Kick the Dog: Absolutely everyone at various points. Judith gets in an especially nasty one on Panhandle in True Romance.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Fitz, not infrequently. Considering how hard he kicks, it's kind of an issue.
• Killed Off for Real: Bilborough and Beck.
• Kinky Cuffs: DCI Wise walks in on Fitz feeling up DS Jane Penhaligon's legs while she's wearing her own handcuffs. When they realise the boss is watching, they jump up and Jane makes a clumsy attempt to slip them off her wrists unobtrusively.
• Kitchen Sink Drama: The show constantly deals with everyday struggles of British working class, fear of becoming unemployed, social inequality, lack of access to education and healthcare, etc.
• Left Hanging: In "One Day A Lemming Will Fly", Fitz actually spends the entire episode pursuing the wrong man for the murder of a child. The episode's entire resolution hinges on the fact that the child's killer will never be known — at least, unless he strikes again... Probably deliberate to show that, no matter how brilliant Fitz is, he can still be dead wrong.
• Madness Mantra: In To Be a Somebody, "L-I-V, E-R-P, Double-O L, Liverpool FC". For non-Brits, this is a traditional chant of supporters of the Liverpool football (soccer) team.
  • The Big Crunch: "All flesh is grass. All flesh is grass".
  • The Madwoman in the Attic: Fitz proposes that the murderer was hearing "Kill the bitch. Kill the bitch" repeatedly to the sound of the train. When the real murderer is shown later on a train, he's repeating various phrases ("I'm too tired. I'm too tired. I'm too tired") while staring at his intended victim.
• Madonna-Whore Complex:
  • David Harvey in Brotherly Love provides an extreme example.
  • In "The New Terror", Fitz humiliates his daughter at her wedding by telling everyone about her long list of boyfriends. This is the daughter he's seen doting on in previous episodes when she was still a little girl.
• Masochism: the pleasures of being hurt; the frisson of being self-destructive
• Maternity Crisis: Completely averted. Judith goes into labour just as she's about to be charged with speeding, which is convenient. She then gets a police escort to the hospital.
• Mean Boss: The Chief Super. Doesn't like Bilborough, Wise or Fitz and frequently insults them (admittedly, not always without reason). Wise at least doesn't take it lying down.
• Meaningful Echo: Bilborough and Beck both say: "This is evidence. This is a dying man's statement".
• Mistaken for Gay: Played for laughs with Fitz and Beck in Brotherly Love. Depending on one's POV, One Day a Lemming Will Fly could be an episode-length exploration.
• Morality Pet: Beck attempts to assuage his guilt over Bilborough's death by looking after his widow and son. In Brotherly Love though, he's rather cruelly let down.
• Motive Rant: Several of the killers get in one of these.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: DS Jimmy Beck. Becomes significantly less noble as the series continues. But he manages to go out with a bit of it back. Sort of. Though even in the early days he is shown bullying and victimizing suspects some of whom are later shown to be innocent.
• "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization:
  Perp: "But he got a hard-on, he enjoyed it!"
  Fitz: "I've had a hard-on from the vibrations of a bus, it doesn't mean I want to shag the conductor."
• "Not So Different" Remark: Alluded to in To Be A Somebody in the interrogation scene with Fitz and Albie. Unusually for this trope, Fitz is the one who points it out and Albie denies it. A rare case of the hero giving this point to the unwilling villain when it's usually the other way round. Though Fitz is only a hero in a narrow sense.
• Old-Fashioned Copper: DS Beck's interrogation techniques sometimes call for fists.
• Oop North: Depending on your point of view it's either played straight (if you're a northerner) or averted (if you're a southerner and you think The North is terrible). Generally Manchester is shown to be pretty much as it is (or was at the time anyway). There's a mix of inner city deprivation with middle class banality. The rich and poor rub up against each other with the general kind of friction you might expect.
• Open Mystery: "To Say I Love You" from the first series and every story from the next two, though "Brotherly Love" plays with it in three ways as it features three distinct criminals; the first murderer is played straight as we see him committing the crime; the second is also seen, but only during her second killing midway through the second episode, and the third is the rapist who attacked Penhaligon in the previous serial, whom Fitz and everyone else is sure is Jimmy Beck but who has been strenuously and convincingly denying it since the end of the last series, is never actually seen committing it, and whom the audience can never be quite sure is guilty, especially since Fitz has got it horribly wrong before, even though he's the obvious suspect. Turns out it really was him.
• Outlaw Couple: In "To Say I Love You", Sean and Tina committed crimes together. Tina compared them to Bonnie and Clyde.
• Parental Abandonment: A central part of Bill Nash's Dark and Troubled Past in "Best Boys".
• Pet the Dog: Subverted in an episode when a serial killer reveals to Fitz that he was going to drown a litter of kittens but decided not to because 'they hadn't done him any harm'. Fitz points out that none of the killer's victims had done him any harm either and that rather than making him sympathetic, the villain was just exhibiting 'sickening sentimentality'.
• Please, I Will Do Anything!: Claire Moody pleads like this to Albie Kinsella
• Police Brutality: Jimmy Beck is guilty of this on multiple occasions.
• Porn Stache: DS Beck has to shave off his mustache because it's become a gay thing, and he's tired of getting teased about it.
• The Profiler: Fitz is considered to be very, very good (albeit impossible to work with), but even then he is not always right.
• Rabid Cop: Jimmy Beck, once causing his superior officer to say "I don't know what you did to him, but you scared the hell out of me".

• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Fitz frequently makes these to the murderers.
• Reunion Show: The 2006 special "A New Terror", though only a few members of the original cast returned.
• Sherlock Scan: Fitz displays an emotion-based version on this trope in Cracker, able to break down somebody's deepest neuroses very quickly. He occasionally displays a more traditional version of this too. Though Fitz's greatest fear is that he was once wrong in his summation, possibly destroying a man's life and letting the murderer of a schoolchild get away.
• Shocking Voice Identity Reveal: Averted in "Men Should Weep". A woman who was blindfolded and raped is later picked up at her house by a taxi driver who's actually the rapist. She recognises his voice, but thinks it's just a traumatic response causing her to see her rapist in every man she meets.
• Shower of Angst: DS Penhaligon takes a bath after she's been raped, but makes sure to wrap her hand in plastic first to preserve evidence from when she scratched her attacker.
• Shown Their Work: The show had some of the most genuinely realistic portrayals of murders and how they happen, at least in the first part of the story, such as why a man might kill a shopkeeper or a prostitute. The handling of the police characters and their relationships also earned high praise from real officers as being pretty much spot-on, though later stories started to mess the detectives up maybe a bit too much. In general though, believable characterisation was this series strongest point. The real life bases of the series are covered in the book Cracker: The Truth Behind the Fiction (ISBN-10: 0752209744).
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Fitz loves to first play sympathetic to the criminals, and just when they start to relax explain in thorough detail why he loathes their guts. Especially notable in To Say "I Love You".
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Danny Fitzgerald, Fitz's estranged brother. Fitz is an eccentric genius with Epicurean lifestyle and nation-wide fame. Danny is a simple down-to-Earth worker and labour activist who had never left their home town and had been looking after their mother for the rest of her life.
• Side Bet: Fitz does this all the time, given that he's a gambling addict.
  DCI Bilborough: (re Fitz's Sherlock Scan) Absolute bollocks.
  Dr Fitzgerald: 45 quid.
  DCI Bilborough: We're conducting a murder inquiry.
  Dr Fitzgerald: Yer money where yer mouth is.
• Stalker with a Crush: In "True Romance", Fitz becomes the target of a secret admirer who is willing to kill – and keep killing – to get his attention, understanding and love.
• Stepford Smiler: Norma Trant in "The Big Crunch", who is totally in denial about her husband's abuse of his community and professional roles: cheating on her with schoolgirls and parishioners, and murder.
• Straight Gay: Stuart Grady in "Best Boys".
• Suddenly Shouting: A different take on this trope appears in "Men Should Weep". Fitz is complaining about his son's layabout ways.
  "You know Mark, you appear to be a symbol of the Lost Generation. Yes, that could well be the case. The crisis of Western capitalism has deprived you of work, motivation and the will to succeed but personally Mark, personally (cuts to someone listening outside the house to the faint voice of Fitz shouting inside) I think you're a bone-idle git!
• Talking the Monster to Death: Well, maybe not "To Death", but there's no better way to describe what it is Fitz does to the suspects. Almost done literally to DS Beck at one point.
• Television Serial
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Albie's stated motive in "To Be a Somebody" - "Treat people like scum and they start acting like scum!".
• Token Minority: DC Skelton initially comes off this way; his early appearances are brief, often overtly highlighting his race (Men Should Weep, most obviously). He transcends this in Season Three, where he's given a more prominent role.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: A double dose of it with both Judith and Penhaligon. Lampshaded by Judith, who points out in one episode that men think she's available, given the state of their marriage, and Fitz' looks. Panhandle does have certain 'father' issues which may explain it though. Even Fitz admits that he's probably a father substitute.
• The Unsolved Mystery: Done in "One Day A Lemming Will Fly". A teacher, in custody as a suspect, confesses to the murder of a school pupil, but then when he is alone with Fitz, tells him that he didn't do the murder but feels so guilty about his treatment of the boy (not to mention all the pressure the public, the police and especially Fitz put him under to "confess", lasting nearly two whole episodes) that he said he did it anyway. The real murderer is never identified, not even any plausible suspects are put forward. Worse, Fitz wasted so much time on this teacher, and the case has acquired such a high-profile, that Bilborough decides to ignore his pleas that he got it wrong and still try and convict the man for the crime.
• Vigilante Execution: In the ending of "Brotherly Love" Jimmy Beck forces David Harvey under a gun point to go to a building's roof, handcuffs him to himself and jumps down.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: In "Men Should Weep", a rapist is assaulting the wives of people he has a grudge against. He threatens a government bureaucrat with this trope, later raping and murdering his wife. When a detective calls in the address to headquarters in the grieving man's presence, he suddenly remembers the threat.
  Detective: You must be threatened a lot in this job.
  Bureaucrat: This one was different.
  Detective: How?
  Bureaucrat: He meant it.
• Walk and Talk: A notable one in "One Day A Lemming Will Fly": Fitz and Penhaligon escort Cassidy through a shopping center (later joined by Beck), all the while probing his psyche, in a four minute single take.
• Wall Bang Her: In "To Say I Love You", Fitz realizes the killers of a loan shark have done this when he finds long hair on the wall near the body. He then has a couple of amused detectives recreate the event.
• Wham Episode: "To Be a Somebody" (Bilborough dies) and "Men Should Weep" (Penhagilion is raped by Beck, who commits suicide).
• Wicked Cultured: Albie in "To Be a Somebody". Part of his motive; he resents being mistaken for an inarticulate hooligan when he's smart enough to identify a Mozart piece from a few bars.

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