| Genre | Comedy |
|---|---|
| Running time | 28 minutes |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| Home station | BBC Radio 4 |
| Starring | Michael Fenton Stevens John Ramm Matt Green Jan Ravens Samantha Spiro |
| Written by | Lynne Truss |
| Produced by | Karen Rose |
| Original release | 26 January 2007 – 23 December 2013 |
| No. of series | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 25 |
| Audio format | Stereophonic sound |
Inspector Steine is a radio comedy drama series written by Lynne Truss and produced by Sweet Talk for BBC Radio 4.[1] The producer is Karen Rose and music is by Anthony May.
Set in a police station in Brighton in the 1950s, it tells the story of Inspector Steine (Michael Fenton Stevens) and his colleagues Sergeant Brunswick (John Ramm) and Constable Twitten (Matt Green), plus the station charlady Mrs Groynes (Jan Ravens in Series 1 and Samantha Spiro from Series 2 onwards).
Guest stars have included Janet Ellis, Mark Heap, Allan Corduner and Carla Mendonca.
The programme was inspired by the opening rolling caption about crime in Brighton at the beginning of the film Brighton Rock, which claimed that Brighton was now (in the 1950s) free of crime. Lynne Truss has written that: "This highly unrealistic reassurance prefacing Brighton Rock was the inspiration for the comedy series Inspector Steine...I wanted to write about a celebrity police inspector in the 1950s who innocently (and touchingly) believed precisely what he had been told at the movies"[2]
Four series of six episodes each were broadcast from 2007 to 2011, followed by a one-off Christmas episode "The Christmas of Inspector Steine" which was broadcast as part of the Afternoon Drama strand on BBC Radio 4 on 23 December 2013.[3]