A series filmed over nine months inside Thames Valley Constabulary.

Lord Scarman called for longer training to cope with today's policing problems. Recruits are sometimes as young as 18. Others are ex-servicemen in their 30s. They face as much as 30 years on the streets as bouncer, lawyer, doctor, social worker. They will have special powers over all of us. Not all of them will be equal to the pressure. Yet ten weeks at a Home Office Training Centre plus two more weeks at Thames Valley's own centre is all that new recruits receive before they face the public.
All the instructors are working policemen, so the attitudes they pass on offer revealing insights into the way the police see us.
Tonight's episode follows several young recruits preparing to 'get stuck in' to Reading's gruelling three-shift system.
Film editor CHARLES ALDRIDGE Sound MALCOLM HIRST
Producers ROGER GRAEF , CHARLES STEWART
Series editor JOHN SHEARER. BBC Bristol
Set Letters and Arena on BBC1, Tues 10.5