City of Vice is a British historical crime drama television series set in Georgian London and first screened on 14 January 2008 on Channel 4.
The series mixes fiction with fact following the fortunes of the famous novelist Henry Fielding (Ian McDiarmid) and his brother John (Iain Glen).
Henry and John Fielding were magistrates of Westminster and the men who created the modern police force in Britain through the Bow Street Runners.
The Reverend Erasmus Cavendish is found murdered and the evidence leads to an infamous Molly house on Saffron Hill, a brothel and rendezvous for London's gay men, where William Flynn is named as the prime suspect.
It also turns out that Mr. Daniel Carne, one of the Bow Street Runners, is a closet homosexual and sodomite (at the time a crime punishable by death).
The Bow Street Runners investigate a burglary in Mayfair, the search leading to the shanty towns of Covent Garden, known as the Seven Dials, and a gang of Irish immigrant criminals.
While lobbying the Duke of Newcastle to obtain his support for the venture, Henry investigates a secretive trade in child prostitutes.
[5] The first episode of City of Vice was relatively well received in the British press, The Times describing it as "an antidote to the current spate of twee costume dramas" and "more likely to resonate with cynical modern audiences".
[6][7] The Guardian described it as looking "gravelled for cash" but compensating with "documentary direction and Ian McDiarmid's voice, as rich as a liqueur.
The player takes control of a "Bow Street Runner" and has to solve several crimes by collecting clues, consulting witnesses and visiting several places in Georgian London.