YMMV / Between the Lines (1992)

• Fan Nickname: The show was named "Between the Loins" or "Between the Sheets", due to some sex scenes that at the time were a bit more explicit than usual in the genre.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • DI Flynn in "Private Enterprise" is played by a pre-Rome Ciarán Hinds.
  • Chief Superintendent Jameson in "Out of the Game" is played by Pete Postlethwaite just before his Oscar-nominated role in In the Name of the Father. This episode also features a young Marc Warren as a PC on the scene just after the shooting.
  • A young Paterson Joseph plays the officer under investigation in "Words of Advice."
  • Jim Carter, David Bradley and Neil Dudgeon all appear in "Lies and Damned Lies" long before the roles which they would become most well known for in Downton Abbey, Harry Potter and Midsomer Murders respectively.
  • Ray Winstone, in his pre-Hollywood years, plays Sergeant Godley in "A Watch and Chain Of Course".
  • Sergeant Don Royal from "The Only Good Copper" is played by Trevor Peacock, who would later be best known for playing Jim Trott in The Vicar of Dibley. This same episode also introduces Jenny's new love interest, played by Jerome Flynn, better known now as one half of Robson and Jerome as well as for his role on Ripper Street.
  • In "Nothing to Declare" One of the Customs officers is played by Keith Allen, who was a well-known character actor at the time but nowadays is probably better known as the father of Lily and Alfie Allen. His right-hand man is played Paul Higgins, who would go on to appear in The Thick of It and Line of Duty.
  • "Nothing Personal features John Hannah, Creator/Rudolph Walker and Steven Mackintosh before they all became more well-known over the course of the nineties.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The show serves as a time capsule of policing and of life in general at the turn of the nineties:
  • Female constables are all given the rank of WPC. They also wear skirts, even when they're out on the beat or doing something likely to require more physical activity. Mo a bit of an outlier since she does wear trousers when's she undercover as a uniformed officer supervising an outdoor event.
  • In "Out of the Game" the episode opens with a couple of milk floats making their respective rounds on the Sowerville estate and on Tony's street. There are no female officers in the armed response unit or the riot police who go out onto the estate. Mo also calls a colleague to ask about Vernon Brandell's previous convictions using a classic brick-sized mobile phone that she carries around in a briefcase. We frequently see characters making calls from phone boxes in other episodes.
  • In "A Watch and Chain Of Course", Tony asks Mo to try and get a look at the timesheets at Amberley Road, which are printed on massive sheets of paper and stored in a back-office.
  • Evidence storage is also pretty different. We see some very slow-moving police computers in action, but also a lot of paper evidence. The fact that it's often only held for a few years before being shredded comes into effect in some of the investigations.
  • In "Breaking Point", Tony says he wants video of riot on "all four channels." In the early nineties, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and Channel 4 were the only terrestrial channels available in the UK, and hardly anyone had cable or satellite television.
    • In the same episode we Sue at work wearing one of the old style white nurses' caps that were pretty much gone by the Turn of the Millennium.
  • Harry does some rally driving on some waste ground near Battersea Power Station in "Watching the Detectives". This area has since been built on and gentrified, with the power station itself being converted into a high-end shopping centre.
  • "Nothing to Declare" takes place in the Docklands area at the time when it was in the middle of being redeveloped from derelict docks into high-end office spaces. The Customs and Excise team appear to be operating out of a private office that's yet to be occupied or fully furnished.
• Values Dissonance: In "Breaking Point" Billy his dad and his brother some soup from the local shop which he refers to as "a Paki's". When he mentions that it's mango and coriander flavoured, his brother asks him if he's coming out of the closet.

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