McLevy


McLevy is a British radio crime drama series, written by David Ashton, about the 19th century Edinburgh police detective James McLevy. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of its Afternoon Drama slot, the drama stars Brian Cox and Siobhan Redmond, with Michael Perceval-Maxwell and David Ashton.
WWW Official Site

Main cast

In the 1999 pilot play, Phyllis Logan played Jean and John Paul Hurley played Mulholland. Lieutenant Roach was not introduced until the actual first episode of Series One; in the pilot play, McLevy's superior was Lieutenant Moxey, with the change in command explained as Moxey having been "elevated" to The Haymarket.

Supporting cast

  • Jessie Nairn, Jean Brash's right-hand woman and "Keeper of Keys" of "The Happy Land" and "The Just Land" until she was stabbed to death by a hired killer.
  • Hannah Semple, who took over as Jean's "Keeper of Keys"; in Series 9, she had to flee Leith after killing a deranged sword-wielding "client" to protect Jean but returned in Series 11.
  • Constable Miller, a rather inept constable who was killed in the line of duty preventing an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria; unfortunately, to McLevy's fury, because of the would-be assassin's identity, higher authorities swept the attempt under the carpet and the "official" version of Miller's death was that he had been stabbed to death by "a sneak thief". His stationhouse duties were taken over after his death by Constable Ballantyne, played by Finlay McLean.
  • "The Countess", Jean Brash's chief rival in the brothel trade. During a power struggle between herself and Jean, she tried to have Jean framed for murder but was ultimately jailed herself as an accomplice to that murder; it was revealed in Series 5 that she died in prison; however, in Series 2 of McLevy in the New World, she appeared in San Francisco after having escaped from Perth Penitentiary.
  • Donald McIver, Hannah Semple's former boyfriend and an inveterate gambler who married Hannah in Series 5, but sadly was later shot and killed when a high-stakes card game he was playing in was held up by two men with a pistol.
  • Inspector Adam Dunsmore of the Haymarket district, later transferred to Princes Street; McLevy despises him as both an inefficient investigator and being more interested in furthering his own career than in solving crimes.
  • Chief Constable Murray Craddock, a self-righteous and intolerant man who is determined to purge Edinburgh of what he considers immorality.

Format

While some of the series contain a thread connecting all of that series' stories into one storyline, the elements of each of the stories remain constant:
  • McLevy's single-minded pursuit of and for justice on his beat no matter which class of people are involved;
  • His frustration with and contempt for "respectability" and its hypocrisy, especially when the truth about a crime is covered up to protect upper-class people involved but a crime committed by lower-class people is severely punished;
  • His often-stormy but complex relationship with Jean Brash, the owner and operator of "The Happy Land" and later "The Just Land", the "best bawdy-hoose" in Edinburgh;
  • His equally complex working relationship with Irish-born Constable Mulholland, McLevy's partner in investigations;
  • His clashes with his long-suffering, class- and politically-conscious and wife-dominated superior Lieutenant Roach.
The historicity of the series is not always faultless. For example, an episode on 24 March 2015 involved a robbery of the British Linen Bank, although that bank did not obtain that title until 1906.

List of episodes

Series 8

In other media

All episodes of series 1-12 are currently available on both CD, audio download and with the exception of the pilot episode can be listened to for free on BBC Sounds.