Lenny Blue is a British television crime drama series first broadcast on ITV between 1 October 2000 and 2 July 2002, under the title of Tough Love.
[1] Two series were broadcast, each starring Ray Winstone as protagonist DC Lenny Milton, an officer tasked by the IPCC to go undercover to investigate claims of corruption against his boss, Mike Love (Adrian Dunbar).
The plotline for the first series was given by ITV as follows: "Lenny Milton (Ray Winstone) is not as ambitious as his best friend and popular boss DCI Michael Love (Adrian Dunbar), but the pair are drinking partners and their wives and children are close.
"Series two follows Milton's dogged quest to bring down Barry Hindes (David Hayman), after a friend of his son's dies in a heroin-related overdose, and a gang war between drug dealers breaks out on his local estate.
Euan Ferguson of The Guardian said of the series:[7] "Lenny Blue was finely scripted, beautifully shot and carefully acted throughout – no big-screen British crime drama would dare attempt the scene, far from central to the plot, in which the mother of a dead teenager reduced a school hall to a hunched and whimpered awkwardness.