The Lock Up (2011)
The Lock Up is an observational documentary series following the staff of the custody suite at Priory Road Police Station in Hull. It was first broadcast on 4 February 2011 on BBC Three. The first eight-part series was filmed over the course of a year; during the year, around 6,500 prisoners passed through the suite, and the issues custody officers had to deal with included attempted suicides and a range of troubled people including drug addicts, minors and violent individuals. The first series was shown on BBC Three and repeated on BBC One. The second series made its debut on BBC One on 28 August 2012 and is narrated by John Thompson. The show follows the format of filming the overnight shift at Priory Road Police Station reception where a variety of miscreants, mainly drunken youths and violent characters are booked in and locked up for the night in the cells. The show involves a good deal of humour generated by the banter between the prisoners and the officers on duty. Some of the characters booked in to the lock-up are vulnerable people, many are violent and prone to spitting. The end of the show is marked by the handover to the next shift and the release of detained miscreans either to discharge without charge or for processing for court.
Country: GB
Language: En
Runtime: 30
Season 1:
Sgt Rich West deals with a drunken teenage graffiti artist who has run riot through his mother's house, a man who has given himself a headache by hitting the cell door, and a regular visitor to the station whose breathalyser reading is five times over the limit.
Sgt Dave Beer comes across two regular offenders - an 11-year-old girl arrested for assault and a 12-year-old who threatened to set fire to her care worker. Officers deal with a newcomer to the custody suite who is too small to reach the desk to sign his name, and a teenager charged with burgling a pensioner, while a mother begs her son to give up alcohol for the sake of his family.
It's a round of medical emergencies and digestive dilemmas for Sgt Peter Swann, famed in Humberside Police for his everlasting appetite. The sergeant finds himself face to face with a cheese thief who steals to feed his drugs habit; a burglar who won't eat or drink because he has swallowed his loot and refuses to go through the evidential 'motions'; and the teenage boozer who wants to be a copper and is so drunk she can't keep anything down.
After running a red light with the cops in tow, a drunk and strangely-garbed student faces a career in tatters. It's a long expensive road back to Vietnam for the illegal cannabis grower who has paid a gang 6,000 euros to get him to the UK.
A copper by name and a copper by nature, stand-in sergeant Stu Constable faces a prisoner's ultimate weapon, bodily fluids, in a dirty protest at the suite. When an old soldier collapses with a suspected stroke, the sergeant has to contend with the hospital medics who send the veteran back to the Lock Up.
