City of Vice

Season

2008

UK

7.5

In 18th-century London, novelists Henry and John Fielding fight crime on the perilous streets of Covent Garden, determined to clean up the city rife with prostitution, gambling, and villainy before modern policing.

Episode List

S1 • E1

Episode #1.1

In lawless 1750s London, Henry Fielding and his blind brother John set up the Bow Street Runners, an embryonic police force with three other men who must be above corruption, bankrolled by Lord Newcastle, to bring order to a lawless city.

S1 • E2

Episode #1.2

A vicar's murder leads the Runners to an illegal, underground gay culture, punishable by death. Amid political pressure to avoid scandal, one of the Runners is implicated, causing the brothers to confront their own prejudices.

S1 • E3

Episode #1.3

A break-in at a merchant's Mayfair home brings the Bow Street Runners into conflict with their patron, Lord Newcastle. He reminds the Fieldings that their prime duty is to protect the property of the rich and yet burglaries have increased.

S1 • E4

Episode #1.4

A high-profile jailbreak humiliates the Bow Street Runners and risks making Lord Newcastle look foolish for supporting them. The Runners travel to the Seven Dials to track down Jones, with Fielding leading the raid, at his own risk.

S1 • E5

Episode #1.5

Henry looks back on the struggle to fund the Bow Street Runners in the first place, and reflects on how close London came to not having a police force at all. As the new magistrates of Westminster, novelist Henry Fielding and his blind half-brother John want to set up a police force to tackle London's soaring crime epidemic. They find a potential patron in Lord Newcastle, the Prime Minister's brother, but he is unsure of such a force's merits. With the help of Saunders Welch, the High Constable of Holborn, the brothers set out to show Newcastle they can rid the streets of the violent criminal gangs.