Crime Traveller

Lore & Background

The series follows Detective Jeff Slade, a CID officer who routinely carries a handgun, unusual for a British police detective. He works under DCI Grisham, alongside slow-witted DS Morris and naïve trainee DC Nicky Robson. Slade's colleague Holly Turner, a forensic scientist, secretly owns a working time machine built by her late father. After Slade discovers her secret, they use the machine to travel back in time to witness crimes as they happen, allowing Slade to solve cases in record time.

Reader's Guide

Crime Traveller attracted over eight million viewers regularly during its first series, yet was not renewed. According to creator Anthony Horowitz, the show was not exactly cut; a new Head of Drama arrived at the BBC, creating a chasm, and with no one around to commission a new series, it simply did not happen. The series was released on DVD by Revelation Films on 21 June 2004, including an exclusive interview with Horowitz. Its legacy lies in its unique blend of time travel and police procedural, though it remains a cult curiosity rather than a long-running franchise.

Did You Know?

• Anthony Horowitz got the idea for Crime Traveller while writing an episode of Poirot.
• The time machine was built by Holly Turner's late father and is kept in her apartment.
• The caretaker Danny constantly deals with power outages caused by using the time machine.
• The show was not renewed despite averaging around 5-6 million viewers.

Origins & Creative Vision

Anthony Horowitz conceived Crime Traveller during a period of writing for the long-running Agatha Christie adaptation Poirot, channeling his interest into a wholly original concept: a detective drama where the central tool for cracking cases is a functioning time machine. The resulting 1997 British science fiction series was produced by Carnival Films for the BBC and placed a time-travel mechanism at the heart of procedural crime storytelling. Horowitz served as both creator and sole writer, penning every single episode of the run. The premise was deceptively simple yet fresh for British television at the time — rather than relying on forensic analysis or interrogation alone, the protagonist could literally travel back to the moment a crime was committed and observe the perpetrator firsthand. This blend of hard-boiled police procedure with speculative technology gave the show a distinctive identity, setting it apart from the conventional detective dramas that dominated the BBC schedule in the late 1990s.

Characters & the Time Machine

At the centre of the series stands DI Jeff Slade, a CID detective whose maverick methods repeatedly land him in trouble with his superiors. Unusually for a British officer in such a position, Slade is armed, routinely carrying a handgun. His boss, DCI Kate Grisham, is a perpetually irritable figure whom Slade is constantly getting on the wrong side of. The true engine of the show, however, is science officer Holly Turner, who harbours a closely guarded secret: a working time machine built by her late father. She keeps and adjusts the device in her apartment, and once Slade uncovers its existence, the pair use it to travel back to the precise moment a crime unfolds, identifying the culprit with certainty. This capability sends Slade's case-solving record soaring. Around them orbit a colourful supporting cast, including DS Morris, a slow-witted colleague who habitually claims credit for Slade's successes, and DC Nicky Robson, a posh but naïve trainee whose excessive trust repeatedly puts him in jeopardy. Even the building caretaker, Danny, becomes a recurring presence, perpetually dealing with the power outages the machine's operation causes.

Cancellation & the BBC Chasm

Despite drawing in excess of eight million viewers on a regular basis, Crime Traveller was not picked up for a second series after its initial run. The reason, as Anthony Horowitz himself later explained, was not a creative or editorial decision to cut the show. Instead, a leadership change at the BBC created what he described as a chasm — the arrival of a new Head of Drama coincided with the end of the show's run, and in the resulting institutional vacuum there was simply no one in a position to commission a new series. The production did not receive a formal axe; it simply fell through the cracks of an administrative transition. For a programme that had built a substantial and loyal audience, the abrupt and unceremonious end felt all the more striking. Horowitz's recollection underscores how fragile a television series can be, dependent not on its own quality or popularity but on the bureaucratic machinery around it. The show's single series remains its entire legacy, a complete but unfinished body of work that never got the chance to evolve, deepen its mythology, or explore the long-term consequences of its time-travel premise.

Cultural Context & Home Media

Crime Traveller arrived in a landscape already populated by time-travel narratives with crime or justice elements. The American series Quantum Leap sent a protagonist back in time to correct past wrongs, often involving criminal activity, while Seven Days featured a government-controlled machine that could send one man a week into the past, reserved for averting serious disasters that might include stopping criminals or terrorists. The 1994 film Timecop, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, placed a police officer directly in a time-travel framework. Against this backdrop, Crime Traveller distinguished itself by rooting its speculative premise firmly in the texture of British police procedure — the CID, the local force hierarchy, the mundane frustrations of a detective's daily life — rather than in a broader geopolitical or superheroic context. The series eventually found a wider audience through home video: Revelation Films released the complete run on DVD on 21 June 2004, a set that included an exclusive interview with Horowitz, offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the show's creation and the circumstances of its brief run.