Crime Traveller
| Crime Traveller | |
|---|---|
Title card
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| Genre |
Crime drama Science fiction |
| Created by | Anthony Horowitz |
| Starring |
Michael French Chloë Annett Sue Johnston Paul Trussell Richard Dempsey Bob Goody |
| Music by | Anne Dudley |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 8 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Brian Eastman |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Carnival Films |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC One |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original release | 1 March – 19 April 1997 |
Crime Traveller is a 1997 science fiction detective television series produced by Carnival Films for the BBC based on the premise of using time travel for the purpose of solving crimes.
Anthony Horowitz created the series and wrote every episode. He got the idea while writing an episode of Poirot. Despite having over eight million viewers on a regular basis, Crime Traveller was not renewed after its first series, because according to Horowitz, "The show wasn't exactly cut. There was a chasm at the BBC, created by the arrival of a new Head of Drama and our run ended at that time. There was no-one around to commission a new series...and so it just didn't happen." The final episode of the series was followed the next week by the first episode of Jonathan Creek, which became a popular long-running crime series.
Jeff Slade is a detective with the CID department of the local police force led by Kate Grisham; although unusually for such a position he is an armed officer, carrying a handgun as routine. Slade is a good detective who gets results although his approach is somewhat maverick and his methods do leave a lot to be desired and have more than once landed him in trouble. Amongst Slade's colleagues at the department is science officer Holly Turner who has a secret that Slade manages to uncover. Holly owns a working time machine that was built by her late father. The machine is able to take Slade and Holly back far enough in time to witness a crime as it happens and discover who committed it. As a result, Slade's track record with crime solving goes through the roof with case after case being solved in record time.
The Time Machine featured in the series was invented by Professor Frederick Turner. The machine has been cobbled together from various different pieces of electronic equipment over the years and has a distinctly home-made look about it. Turner built the machine in the living room of his flat in Sundown Court where he lived with his daughter Holly and presumably at some stage his wife. Holly is the only other person he ever told about the machine. The most vital component for the machine is the electro-magnetic crystal which is in the heart of the machine. Unfortunately it is also the single most expensive part of the machine. Turner had to sell his house to buy his. The machine can only travel backwards in time as it is not possible to travel into a future which does not yet exist and it can only go back a few hours into the past, although it could in theory go back a week.
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