Second Verdict

Storyline

Second Verdict is a six-part BBC television series from 1976, of dramatised documentaries in which classic criminal cases and unsolved crimes from history were re-appraised by fictional police officers. In Second Verdict, Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor reprised for a final time their double-act as Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt, hugely popular with TV audiences from the long-running series Z-Cars, Softly, Softly and Barlow at Large. Second Verdict built on the formula of their 1973 series Jack the Ripper in which dramatised documentary was drawn together with a discussion between the two police officers which formed the narrative. Second Verdict also allowed for some location filming and, when the case being re-appraised was within living memory, interviews with real witnesses. The episodes were: ⁕"The Lindbergh Kidnapping" ⁕"Who Killed the Princes in the Tower?" ⁕"The French Bluebeard" ⁕"Murder on the 10.27" ⁕"Lizzie Borden" ⁕"Who Burned the Reichstag?". Although this was the last time Barlow and Watt would be seen together on British TV, the Watt character would make one final appearance, in the last episode of Z-Cars in September 1978.