London's Burning

Just discovered the entire series on Sky, so started to watch it again. Just finished Ep 3 of Series 1 - I guess seeing it again makes me realise how much London has changed since 1987 and from when this was filmed. A lot of the acting is really wooden and poor, and the scripts focus too much on their personal lives instead of actual emergencies.

Another thing noticeable is how awfully unattractive most of the wives & girlfriends & partners of the Blue Watch firefighters are - I guess the low budget is partly to blame.

But it's also interesting to see how the London Fire Brigade evolves over the course of the series - in terms of vehicles, equipment, uniforms etc. and makes you really appreciate how hard things were for them back in those days - so kudos and hats to them - for the excellent job they did back then and they do today & everyday to keep us and London safe!

I like the series very much.. Especially the great actors and the great stunts, of course! Here in Finland we follow the series 96-97 season (after Bayleaf´s leaving and Hallam´s death)

I don't know who the target audience for this show is

One minute there is a huge explosion And lots of action

5 minutes later there is a tedious relationship scene, where the couple argue or they profess their love for each other

The rest of the episode is filled with predictable banter and dull drama , it's exactly like that awful show " where the heart is" but instead of being set up north it's in saarf landan innit

The show now seems incredibly dated, for instance whenever there is a sad scene they play slow saxophone and close-ups of the actors faces, it is this aspect of the show which ruins it for me, ITV did the same thing with minder and they ruined an amazing show.

Another really bad thing about the show is most of the main characters are identical And have no strong personalities, they are all good natured and predictable,

characters like sicknote recall and bayleaf really are completely identical

the show really needed to have a few bad firefighters to liven it up,but the director was incapable of thinking ahead, and just wanted a dull predictable series.

London's Burning was a show about the firefighters of Blue Watch based in London. It was originally a one-off TV movie made in 1986 and this was the series that followed.

London's Burning has provided viewers with some of the best drama/special effects and a fantastic dose of drama in the firefighter's personal lives. From the first series, London's Burning kept topping itself as the firefighters coped with bigger blazes and more and more personal problems. Here in the UK in real life, only one in five calls is for a fire-most firefighters deal with road accidents and rescue operations and London's Burning showed all this.

There have been some memorable characters throughout such as Poison Pearce (nicknamed because of his poisonous tongue) and Sicknote (nicknamed that for obvious reasons). There has been a constant change of characters and senior officers throughout and it has provided many tears at times. It has been a good show.

The 2002 series was rubbish though. Some of the popular characters such as Station Officer Coleman and Divisional Officer Griggs were gone and replaced by some unconvincing characters. There also seemed to be more sex and drama and less fires. The show might as well have been renamed London's Having Love Affairs.

The 2002 series was probably the last and I hope it is. However, videos of the earlier shows are available and worth checking out.

London's Burning was a mainstay of ITV's Sunday night scheduling during the late 80's and 90's. The series emerged from the TV film written by the late and great Jack Rosenthal and followed a group of fire fighters belonging to Blue Watch at London's Blackwall fire station.

Initially the series kept a lot of Rosenthal's influence. The humour was lively with station pranks and the loves and lives of the watch being the backbone of the series. In between all this were the fires and other shouts which helped to highlight the diverse work of the fire brigade as their role has changed over the shows lifespan. A few dark moments relating to death or injury of the fire fighters or victims put a dark edge on the show which helped to prevent it from becoming a farce and the whole package made for extremely addictive viewing.

Sadly the last few series beginning in 2000 started the downward spiral. By 2000, most of the original cast had left as they had become disillusioned with the writing or wanted to pursue other opportunities before they became typecast. Their replacements were usually dour characters that had plenty of personal baggage and the humorous aspects were replaced by deep thoughts and crisis in relationships. ITV also tried to increase the number of episodes per year whilst reducing the budget which diminished the number of spectacular fires that the brigade would attend in a series and it became more of a soap rather than the refreshing series that it had been when it first started.

Eventually around 2001 the series was axed and it has now been replaced by Steel River Blues which has all the promise to be like London's Burning was in the early days.