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In the eighteenth century, London is a city filled with prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and villains. In a time before the invention of modern policing procedures, the novelist Henry Fielding and his blind brother John, battle the perilous streets of Covent Garden in their quest to clean up the crime-ridden city.
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Episode 1
Mon, Jan 14, 200848 mins
In the lawless London of the 1750s, Henry Fielding, the humane novelist and magistrate, and his blind brother John, set up the Bow Street Runners, an embryonic police force with three other men who must be above corruption. They are bank-rolled by Lord Newcastle. Whilst dining at an inn run by pimp Jack Harris, word comes to the Fieldings that a prostitute called Ann Bell has been raped and half-killed at a nearby bath-house. It is vital that the criminal be found, not solely in the interests of justice but to prove that the Runners are worthwhile.