Breaking Down the Nervous Detectives - He learns how to steal and he learns how to fight in the ghetto

Here Come the Double Deckers - "The Case of the Missing Doughnut" - January 15, 1971

I am often overwhelmed by the skill that British television can use when looking at squalor and despair. This show, as an example, is often listed in textbooks due to its cold hard look at young children who have been forced to live on the streets in abject poverty.


Among other things, this series was most likely the first to show a recurring character operating a methamphetamine lab.


In this episode, we are treated to a glimpse into the hardened mind of the young criminal named doughnut. Deprived of even the most simple needs of sustenance and attention, Doughnut goes on a rampage of wanton destruction.

Rejected by society to the point where he is so base that he is almost literally invisible, Doughnut revels in his strange netherworld placement. Beyond the panopticon, he is free to enjoy only the fruits of his own misery and cruelty.


Note his young compatriot, Tiger. Tiger's companion is a stuffed tiger named Tiger. Societal marginalization has caused a blurring of identity. Notice also her possession of a Danish flag, perhaps a symbol of her sympathy to a Neo-Kierkegaardian sense of disconnection with the religiously enforced social mores of British society.


Ultimately, Doughnut's unstoppable rampage is thwarted. His moment of revelation comes when he is hit over the head with a vaguely doughnut shaped object, a tambourine. (Tambourines are frequently the musical instrument of rugged self-awareness, in the same way that the cowbell is the instrument of delusion). Doughnut is then paddled with cricket bats. The status quo of aristocrical oppression has once again manifested itself.



In the words of Homi K. Bhabha:

If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.

Doughnut's journey to self-awareness has come full circle. He has returned to his normal state of quiet misery, always wanting but never striving. Life for him is a journey, a journey on a double decker London bus. To nowhere.