Airdate: Behind the Force

Next week SBS ONE premieres UK factual Behind the Force, going behind the scenes of a British police station and following crimes from the moment they are called in.

“It’s observational not a reality style at all, but very much about the operational side of things and how the police deal with crimes,” SBS programmer Jane Roscoe told TV Tonight earlier this year.

In the UK it was known simply as The Force, but has undergone a title change due to Seven’s The Force: Behind the Line.

With unprecedented access to Hampshire Constabulary, a typical large provincial police force in the grip of profound change, this series follows the investigation of three major crimes, offering a rare and unique insight into the reality of modern policing.

The first episode begins with a murder investigation. A woman’s body, burned beyond all recognition, is discovered lying in a cornfield on a quiet summer’s day.

Two days into the case, the police know their victim has been strangled, her body carried in a suitcase to a field near a tiny Hampshire village, and then set alight; but not who she or who her killer is.

House-to-house inquiries unearth a witness who’s seen a battered Vauxhall being driven slowly around the crime scene, the day before the killing. The offender profilers advise that whoever chose that lonely spot had done so because he knew the area, and a database search of car registrations throws up four names, one of them with a Hampshire bank account.

The chase is on, and as the case unfolds it presents an extraordinary snapshot of Britain in the 21st century – the passions and divisions hidden beneath the placid surface of middle England – and a unique insight into the fragility of modern policing.

It begins 8:30pm Tuesday July 5 on SBS ONE.