A Cup of Crime
Menu

Where to see them next

After Juliet Bravo: Where to See Stephanie Turner

ByDavid

Stephanie Turner
Stephanie Turner

Stephanie Turner was a television policewoman before Juliet Bravo. She played WPC Howarth in Z-Cars for four years during the early 1970s.

In 1980, she became Inspector Jean Darblay in Juliet Bravo, carrying the lead for three series. It was one of the first British police shows built around a woman officer.

Her guest record is compact but choice. The Sweeney gave her a recurring role as Regan's wife, ending on the wrong side of a hire car.

Other appearances involved a cold-war laser in Special Branch and Dutch coastal politics in Van der Valk.

Special Branch · S04E04

Stand and Deliver

First broadcast 1974-03-07 · Stephanie Turner as Jean Gosling

An experimental laser goes missing from a military research facility — top secret, unstable, and now in the hands of thieves who have no idea what they are carrying. Turner is Jean Gosling in a cold-war chase where the amateurs make the thing more dangerous, not less, and Special Branch has to find them before the device does the finding for everyone.

The Sweeney · S01E05

Jigsaw

First broadcast 1975-01-30 · Stephanie Turner as Allison Carter

The first of her three appearances as Carter's wife. Regan is sure career criminal Eddie Boyse robbed the factory — the job has his signature on it — but the one detail that matters is the alibi, and it's a cracker: when the robbery happened, Boyse was with Regan. Turner is Alison in the domestic frame around the frustration that makes a grown copper want to kick the nearest wall.

The Sweeney · S01E13

Abduction

First broadcast 1975-03-27 · Stephanie Turner as Alison Carter

A trusted informant tips Regan off about a robbery, and the gang's answer is to take his daughter as a hostage to keep him off the scent. The episode stops being a robbery story and becomes something personal: Regan going after her alone, against his ex-wife and his own bosses, with Turner's Alison Carter on the family side of the worst week a father on the Flying Squad can have.

The Sweeney · S02E05

Hit and Run

First broadcast 1975-09-29 · Stephanie Turner as Alison Carter

The part ends in the show's cruellest piece of mechanism: Carter's wife is killed on her way to post the football pools, knocked down by a driver who never stops — because the borrowed coat she wore made him aim at the wrong woman. Turner's final Sweeney appearance is the mistake the whole episode turns on, the French mistress Judy understanding at once that she was the intended victim.

Van Der Valk · S05E03

Still Waters

First broadcast 1992-02-19 · Stephanie Turner as Els Kortman

Piet is barely into his holiday when the phone finds him: a proposed sea barrier, a vast national project, has run into opposition someone wants quietly smoothed away. Turner is Els Kortman in an episode where the protesters look like the usual nuisance and are not — under the rows about the coastline sits blackmail, corruption, a drug trade, and before long a body.