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Crime Traveller

Detective Jeff Slade teams up with scientist Holly Turner, whose late father has created a time machine that can travel back several hours. Together they solve mysteries using the device. Detective Jeff Slade teams up with scientist Holly Turner, whose late father has created a time machine that can travel back several hours. Together they solve mysteries using the device. Detective Jeff Slade teams up with scientist Holly Turner, whose late father has created a time machine that can travel back several hours. Together they solve mysteries using the device.

• Anthony Horowitz
• Michael French
• Chloë Annett
• Sue Johnston
• 19 User reviews
• 2 Critic reviews

Top cast 90

• Detective Jeff Slade

• Science Officer Holly Turner

• Detective Chief Inspector Kate Grisham

• Detective Morris

• Graduate Trainee Nicky Robson

• Danny, the caretaker

• Stephen Marlowe

• Sonja Duvall

• Mary Chandler

• Guy Lombard

• Gareth Oldroyd

• Sir Iain Hawkins
• Linda Duvall
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Some variation of the phrase "they were in a hurry to get away" is frequently heard throughout the series, referring to unidentified people. This is always a clue that Jeff and/or Holly have time traveled and interfered in the timeline.
• Connections Featured in Harry Hill's Alien Fun Capsule: Episode #2.3 (2018)

User reviews 19

• Mar 7, 2019
• How many seasons does Crime Traveller have? Powered by Alexa
• March 1, 1997 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• London, England, UK
• Carnival Film & Television
• British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 50 minutes

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Crime Traveller

Crime Traveller was a short-lived British television series from The '90s , created and written by Anthony Horowitz . Police detective Jeff Slade (Michael French) discovers the existence of a time machine (maintained by Holly Turner ( Chloë Annett ), daughter of the inventor) that can be used to travel up to a day into the past. Slade teams up with Turner and they start using the machine to solve crimes by visiting crime scenes as the crime is occurring .

This show provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc : We get drip-fed a few pieces of information about Slade's past, including the fact he's divorced and has a photo of a woman who died in his flat, which would presumably have been followed up on if there'd been a second season.
• Amateur Sleuth : Holly kind of fits this trope, since she's more of a scientist than a proper policeman.
• British Brevity : The only season had 8 episodes. There were ideas for a second season, but the BBC wasn't impressed and axed it (like many other of its sci-fi shows from the late 90s).
• Butt-Monkey : Detective Morris, Slade's rival. If anyone's going to slip over during a chase, it's him. One episode even ends with him covered in cuts and with his arm in a sling after being attacked by a dog.
• Clear My Name : Episode 2, with the variant that they have five hours to do it and get back to the time machine. Also present in Episode 5.
• Downer Ending : Although there's a comedic tag scene, the end of Episode 6, where Holly throws Slade out for using the time machine without her permission, has a whiff of this.
• Eagleland Osmosis : At times, it does feel like the show is modelled on American police shows. There's a distinct lack of British police ranks: Slade tends to be referred to simply as "Detective Slade" (except for one episode where a newsreader says he's a detective sergeant) and Grisham is referred to simply as "Chief". Slade also carries a gun a lot more often than a British police officer would, even when off duty.
• Evil Counterpart : Stephen Marlowe, the villain of the finale, uses time travel to commit murders and then give himself an alibi.
• The Exotic Detective : Detective Sergeant Slade's best weapon to solve unusual cases is his access to a time machine that lets him witness the crime that ( from his point of view ) has already happened. There is no way to prevent the crime, so this is the best he can do with it.
• Failure Is the Only Option : Happens every time Slade tries to prevent a murder. Holly also experiences this when she goes back to prevent Slade being shot and merely causes him to meet the person who shoots him (although it turns out there were a few details she was unaware of).
• Hooked Up Afterwards : There's a fair amount of UST between Slade and Holly, and the last episode ends with them holding hands in a rather non-platonic manner, but that's as far as it goes.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet : It's not known what would happen if a time traveller met himself, but it's taken for granted that it would be bad. Probably a good idea.
• Reasonable Authority Figure : Grisham is sometimes this, when she's not being a Bad Boss . It varies wildly.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong : Averted. They're not trying to explicitly change history, just learn more about the details of any mysterious/uncertain case, so it could get properly investigated.
• Of course, the physics of time travel do mean that anything that changes you between departure time and being at departure time again resets, such as the cut to the forehead that Slade receives in the first episode. Even if you do age after a time jump, you will revert back to the age you were to begin with.
• There's a catch though: Miss the time limit left for you to return to the machine and you'll end up in a Stable Time Loop forever . Holly's father Frederick supposedly ended up like this, so he's not really dead (as if that was any reassurance). To prevent the the two detectives from not returning on time, they carry a special countdown wristwatch - and, as per Rule of Drama , it gets accidentally lost in one episode while the characters are on the run, further complicating matters...
• Tempting Fate : Slade is very fond of doing this, especially when trying to make their return to the "present". Slade: We're gonna make it! Holly: Why is it that every time you say something like that, something horrible happens?
• Theme Naming : One episode opens with the police catching a group of bank robbers named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It's not clear if they're their real names.
• Time Travel : In theory, it's all Stable Time Loop and You Already Changed the Past ... but in practice, slip-ups by the writer sometimes result in Timey-Wimey Ball moments. Oh, and you cannot travel into the future, since it hasn't occurred yet (unless you travel to the past and catch up with the point of "present" you departed from).
• Wunza Plot : He's an ordinary London police detective, she's a police science officer who inherited a time machine created by her father. Together, they solve cases by travelling back in time.
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Politicians often link crime and homelessness. The reality is more complex

Meg Anderson

The reality of the link between crime and homelessness is complex

Lillian Risser, left, and Sophia Loveland, right, approach an encampment in Humboldt Park on Sept. 23 in Chicago. Risser and Loveland are outreach workers for Thresholds, a mental health care provider in Illinois that works to move people out of encampments into more permanent housing. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR hide caption

Melissa Farmer often walks her dog through Gompers Park on Chicago’s northwest side.

“This park is gorgeous. People don't know about it,” she said, walking along a lagoon on a recent morning. “I want to keep my fingers crossed that people continue not to.”

In the last year, though, a homeless encampment moved in. In that time, Farmer said she has seen people steal bikes, sell drugs and burn fires. Now, she carries pepper spray. She has complained to police, the city’s parks department and her alderman.

“They're like, ‘you're basically stuck with them,’ which is infuriating,” Farmer said. “I don't personally understand how we can't say, like, ‘hey, you can't live in the park.’”

Many people across the country share Farmer’s concerns. As more people end up living in parks and under viaducts nationwide, residents and politicians in the communities around them have increasingly seen encampments as a threat to public safety.

It has become a major talking point in the race for governor in Washington state and in San Francisco’s mayoral race . A speaker at the Republican National Convention spoke of drug deals and “filthy tents” on her block in Pittsburgh. Before the Democratic National Convention, city officials in Chicago built a fence to deter an encampment there in the name of public safety .

And in a recent Supreme Court decision allowing cities to prosecute people for sleeping outside, a lead attorney spoke of dangerous encampments causing spikes in violent crime.

But how much do homeless encampments really affect crime in communities?

‘The crime itself is due to the nature of being homeless’

Homeless people are more likely to have a criminal record, but researchers caution it’s difficult to disentangle cause and effect.

For example, people who have been incarcerated may find it harder to get a job or housing, which in turn makes them more likely to end up homeless. What’s more, laws banning panhandling or sleeping in public can make run-ins with police more likely.

“A lot of that is just that the crime itself is due to the nature of being homeless,” said Nyssa Snow-Hill, an assistant professor at DePaul University.

Some residents in the surrounding community have expressed frustration about an encampment that formed in Gompers Park on Chicago's northwest side. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR hide caption

Being homeless is a desperate situation. Researchers – and many homeless people – acknowledge that crime happens in encampments. But it tends to be low-level property crime, like petty theft.

“They're not the scary, threatening, threat-to-larger-society crimes that are happening, right? Maybe you're breaking park rules and you're having a bonfire to stay warm or to cook your food or maybe you’re using drugs to self-medicate and cope,” said Christian Zamarriego, director of the homeless outreach program at Thresholds, an Illinois nonprofit that provides services to people with mental health and substance abuse disorders.

Research on whether crime in encampments spills out into surrounding neighborhoods is limited, partly because property crime often goes unreported. Residents around Chicago’s Gompers Park told NPR they’ve noticed an influx of bicycles at the camp, or seen propane tanks disappear from patios and end up there. According to city data , some types of reported crime have risen in the last year around the park, but overall crime is down. However, it’s difficult to isolate an encampment's exact effect on crime trends.

A 2022 study in Seattle found an increase in the size of encampments did not increase the city’s property crime rates as a whole. Still, crime statistics don't always match public perception. Snow-Hill said that has to do with the way people use context clues to understand the world.

“We assume if we see someplace that's unclean, that's in disarray, that there must be crime that's taking place there,” she said.

‘Being with others makes me feel safe’

Many researchers stress that homeless people are more likely to be the victims of crimes.

Most days, outreach workers with Thresholds ride the train and visit encampments in Chicago. They hand out snacks, hygiene products, even clothing from thrift stores to gain trust. They help people obtain needed documents to apply for services and sign them up for mental health care.

Thresholds outreach workers Risser, left, and Loveland, right, speak with Julius Rodriguez, who is living in a tent encampment in Chicago's Humboldt Park. The day they visited, the workers called medical help to take Rodriguez to a hospital for pain. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR hide caption

On a recent outing, two workers met Donald Hasten standing against a wall on a busy street corner. The workers were on their regular route, but hadn’t met him before. Hasten said that’s because he fled his encampment.

“I've been attacked several times. They just tore up my tent. They caught it on fire. They stole all my stuff,” Hasten said.

Four people were recently shot and killed in Chicago while sleeping on the train. Hasten, who said he knew some of them, no longer felt safe on the train or in an encampment.

“But not everybody's like that. Some people are trying to survive,” he said.

Supplies are left in a parking lot for those living in a tent encampment in Chicago's Gompers Park. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR hide caption

Others said encampments make them feel more secure than being alone.

In Chicago’s Humboldt Park, 36-year-old Dennise is staying in an encampment with her wife. She didn’t want to use her last name because some family and friends don’t know she’s homeless. She said not every encampment is safe. You have to find the right one.

“The majority is mostly males in each camp, so it's a little hard to be a female within that. You definitely have to be looking out,” she said. “We kind of worry a little bit, but when we stay in little communities like this, it makes us feel a little safer.”

Brian Bayawa had similar thoughts when he moved into the Gompers Park encampment.

“Being with others makes me feel safe. We got each other's back,” he said, adding that he tries to greet people walking by, so they’ll know he’s a “nice, law-abiding citizen.”

Chris Herring, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, lived in encampments for weeks as part of his research. He said homeless people often try to keep areas clean and safe.

“Even at camps with what many would consider problematic behavior, all of them stressed some ethos of being good neighbors. And this was not always in altruism, although sometimes it was. It was out of a logic of survival,” Herring said.

A sign hangs on a tent stating how many people can be inside at one time in Chicago's Humboldt Park. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR hide caption

“If you want to remain where you are, in the place in the city where you have somehow carved out a place where you feel safe, where you can be with other people and community members who can watch after your belongings, where you have some stability, the way you protect that is by not pissing off your neighbors.”

‘The conditions shouldn’t be as they are’

Zamarriego, of Thresholds, said most people agree encampments are not a good place to live.

“The conditions shouldn't be as they are, right? No matter where you stand on the issue, we don't want encampments. How we go about addressing the issues of encampments differ,” Zamarriego said.

Many researchers say laws criminalizing homelessness worsen the problem by making the lives of people on the street even more challenging. Advocates like Zamarriego say the solution lies in providing more affordable housing.

In Gompers Park, Alderman Samantha Nugent said she wants the city to do an “accelerated moving event.”

“What that looks like is all of these folks from different social service agencies going out there for about a month and really working with the people that are experiencing homelessness and putting a date on when they might have to move out of the specific area, with lots of housing being offered, lots of wraparound services,” Nugent said.

That strategy was successful in a different park in her ward, she said, but City Hall hasn’t given a satisfying answer on what can be done at Gompers Park. City officials have said they’re forming a task force to tackle homeless encampments and are working to move people out of encampments while offering other housing options.

But without a specific plan, the Gompers Park encampment remains intact.

Bernadette Foley, a retired Chicago police officer, often walks in the park. On the job, she found it frustrating to respond to calls about homeless people, a sentiment shared by other officers.

The Chicago skyline emerges behind an encampment in Humboldt Park. Jamie Kelter Davis for NPR hide caption

“As a police officer, you do want to help people. And this is a problem that you keep getting calls on that you can't do anything about,” she said.

She doesn’t think cities need to provide everything for everybody, but she said the safety net should catch more people.

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