Bergerac

Awwwww:

WHEN you walk into police headquarters on Jersey you can't help feeling you've been there before. It's got nothing to do with the sergeant behind the desk, or the squad cars lined up outside. It's the attractive blonde woman in the crime office upstairs. 

Her face is uncannily familiar. So are those inquiring blue eyes. After racking your brains for what seems like an age, it finally comes to you. Bergerac! That's it! She's the spitting image of Jim Bergerac, the TV detective who is Jersey for millions of viewers. 

Just for once, your eyes aren't deceiving you. The woman sitting there surrounded by villains' profiles, witness statements and all the other paraphernalia of police work is John Nettles' daughter, Emma. In an amazing case of fact mirroring fiction, Emma, 28, has joined the force in which her actor father [1943] made his name. 

"I suppose the wheel has come full circle," says Emma. "Dad pretended to work for the Jersey police for 11 years, and now I'm doing the same thing for real. When I rang him up and told him, he was absolutely speechless. He couldn't believe it. It took him a while to get over the shock, but I could tell he was over the moon about it. I may not be his little girl any more, but I still love it when he's proud of me." 

Emma added: "Dad got to know a lot of policemen on Jersey when he was playing Bergerac. Every time I see him he says, `Give my regards to so- and-so'. But the people here have been very good. They haven't taken the mickey out of me because I'm Bergerac's daughter. They accept me for who I am." 

When I first watched it, I thought it gratuitously violent but then got into the story arc.  Now I remember it as a grand series overall but some aspects I didn't like, e.g. when the most promising companion, Cécile Paoli, was written out and the replacement was iffy, the one after was terrible and when it could have got back on track with Thérèse Liotard, the episodes went strange.

Still, there were good ones, most notably with the popular Philippa Vale [Liz Goddard (1950), pictured above].  Interestingly for me ... she's more alluring clothed than unclothed, so I was looking to see when The Ice Maiden episode went out ... 1983.  Just read that she may have had a body double.