The character of Police Constable George Dixon was based on an old-style British "bobby"—a slang term for policeman.

Dixon first appeared in the Ealing Studios film The Blue Lamp (1950) as a typical bobby on the beat, an experienced constable working out of the Paddington Green police station and nearing retirement.

It is mentioned that their only son, Bert, was killed in the Second World War[1]—hence Dixon adopts a paternal aspect towards PC Andy Mitchell (Jimmy Hanley), a young policeman on his first day.

This gears up hugely once Dixon, who was said to be rallying in hospital, unexpectedly and suddenly dies, and Mitchell embarks on a perilous quest to find Tom Riley and bring him to justice.

Dixon would remain basically the same character as in the film; he could be relied on to be friendly with a lot of heart, a cornerstone of which was his honesty with which you knew he would be absolutely dependable and cool in a crisis.

The actor's age meant Dixon was always an older bobby and the viewer was left to wonder why promotion hadn't come his way earlier.

With his experience as a police constable frequently in evidence, he was often shown as being able to solve crimes and to keep the peace using his knowledge of human behaviour and of the Dock Green area.

One of those is "The Rotten Apple"[2] (broadcast 11 August 1956), a story which illustrates Dixon's belief in the honour of wearing the police uniform.

Carr agrees to settle the debt, but as Dixon prepares to leave, accidentally knocks over a box, sending silverware clattering across the floor.

Dixon is affronted by this betrayal of trust, and orders the disgraced Carr to remove his uniform before he will escort him through the streets to Dock Green Station.

At the end of the episode, with the mystery solved, Dixon wishes the viewers goodbye while the happy couple go off, to move to a flat in Chelmsford.

In the early days, a subtitle declared the series to be "Some Stories of a London Policeman", with each episode starting with Dixon speaking directly to the camera (breaking the "fourth wall").

In similar fashion, episodes finished with a few words to camera from Dixon in the form of philosophy on the evils of crime, before saluting and wishing the viewers "Goodnight, all".

"[4] Willis talked in 1957 about seeking "to break away from the accepted formula for police and crime stories [...] The average policeman might go through a life-time of service without being involved in one murder case.

"[5] Change for the central character was slow, and it took until the opening episode of series 11 before George Dixon earned his stripes and was promoted to sergeant in "Facing the Music" (S11, E01, 19 September 1964).

Often delivered at a genteel pace, this approach led to criticism from some quarters in the face of faster-paced (and sometimes more violent) contemporaries such as The Sweeney and even Z-Cars.

Dixon of Dock Green is sometimes unfavourably compared with later police procedural series (such as Z-Cars in the 1960s, The Sweeney in the 1970s and The Bill in the 1980s) which were seen as having a higher degree of realism due to their harder-hitting and more dynamic nature.

A notorious gang of bank robbers has performed a raid locally, and Dock Green police are tipped off "from a reliable source" that they have retreated into a suburban house on their patch.

At least one of these apparently hits and kills the target in the dark, the truth of which only comes to light later during the investigation that is quickly launched back at Dock Green police station.

When it became known that the 1976 series of eight episodes[8] would be the last, some changes saw familiar faces including long-standing and popular cast member Peter Byrne leave, bringing in some new blood.

"[6] In his autobiography, Jack of All Trades,[10] Warner tells of a visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the studios where the series was made, where she commented "that she thought Dixon of Dock Green had become part of the British way of life".

Six Margate constables stood as guards-of-honour outside the chapel while delegations of officers attended (some coming from Wales and Newcastle upon Tyne), including 16 from the Metropolitan Police, led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner George Rushbrook and Commander John Atkins.

He found that, in fact and fiction, characters akin to Jack Regan in The Sweeney were to be underplayed by the police who sought to restore their place in modern communities.

[15][16] The opening and closing moments of each episode originally had PC Dixon delivering the famous lines "Evening, all" and "Goodnight, all", and a suitably moral homily, from outside Dock Green police station.

The 1973 episode "Eye Witness" shows a shot of a derelict warehouse complex with a sign identifying it as part of the Metropolitan & New Crane Wharves; these are located in Wapping Wall.

An out-take sequence also exists from "It's a Gift" (Series 21, Episode 3 – 1 March 1975) involving two criminals in which one of them, played by Victor Maddern, finds himself unable to deliver correctly the required line "It's down at Dock Green nick!"

The show featured specially made short seasonal editions (typically about 10 minutes long) of the previous year's most successful BBC sitcoms and light entertainment programmes.

In the play – which begins with a montage of key scenes from The Blue Lamp – Tom Riley (Sean Chapman) and PC Hughes (Karl Johnson) are projected forwards into a violent parody of 1980s police procedurals called The Filth.

Moreover, Dixon's resurrection for Dixon of Dock Green, after he was killed in The Blue Lamp and the fact that he apparently continued to serve as a police officer well past the usual retirement age find a parallel in the stories of the principal characters in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, being explained in the final episode.