Road Wars

Welcome to the Wild, Wild, West... (7x1)

Data emisji: Lut 17, 2009

Proceedings begin on the M5 just outside Exeter with Chris Davidson and his crewmate Mike Brown out on patrol. An ANPR ding alerts them to a car on the motorway with drugs history, and the driver, at first, seems ready to stop – but doesn’t. Burning off flat out, the pursuit begins with chilled commentary from Mike. The roads get narrower and narrower, but the speeds don’t drop; until, eventually, the inevitable happens and the bandit car loses it on a bend and – a Road Wars first – rolls. Despite best efforts with batons, the windows prove remarkably resistant to their attempts to get the guy out of the damaged vehicle. Amazingly, despite rolling a car, having to be dragged out, and barfing all over the road, the driver still attempts to do a runner and has to be largely sat on to be cuffed. It doesn’t take long to find out why he’s so eager to get away: lots and lots of wraps – and we’re not talking the edible kind. And it’s only the first week of filming! Still in Exeter, we join Darryl Drew and Murphy the dog out on patrol and heading to a crashed car from which three youths have fled. Witnesses send them after the lads, and Murphy quickly picks up a trail, which he sticks to –er– doggedly (sorry). Half a kilometre away, his nose comes good and he corners one of the lads on a pavement. There are no more trails to be found, but the youth that’s been captured hands over a few names, so the driver is nabbed in the end. Unlike the Proactives, the RCU doesn’t do rapid entry, so we hand door-smashing duties over to the Tactical Aid Group – or TAG – who specialise in this sort of thing. And so, we head off to the Coastal town of Dawlish where the unit, with narration by Simon Boobyer, are about to carry out a drugs raid using a truly fearsome two-handed enforcer to take out the door. The journey to the target house is one that would probably startle any dog walker as a bunch of coppers in full riot-gear saunter down a leafy alle