CCTV Cities

On Halloween and Bonfire Night, the police and CCTV operators in Leeds are pushed to the limits as inner-city estates turn into no-go zones and the city centre is rammed with drunken partiers head-to-toe in fancy dress. The life of a CCTV operator is never dull.

With unique access to Wigan's Central Watch "CCTV Cities" finds a thriving northern town in party mood. But some of the partying is not as innocent as it first appears. In central Wigan CCTV cameras record small groups buying, selling and snorting suspicious wraps of white powder openly in the streets.

The City of London is a square mile under constant CCTV surveillance. Buzzing with bankers during the day, by night the hard working stops and the hard partying begins. And the cameras originally set up to protect the City from IRA terrorists are now used to help the police prevent crime and anti social behavior.

Donal MacIntyre joins operators in the Blackburn CCTV control room as they point the Lancashire police towards shoplifters and violent drunks in the lead up to "Mad Friday" the last weekend before Christmas. We see Blackburn's shopping centre struggle with the most audacious string of thefts and as night falls the problems increase as partying turns to violence.

In the early weeks of the new season, CCTV Cities looks at how Leedswatch CCTV team and West Yorkshire police handle what's potentially the most explosive fixture of them all. Leeds United are playing Millwall - and the fans on both sides are squaring up.

Watching the granite streets of Edinburgh is no mean feat for the CCTV operators in this Jekyll and Hyde city. By day this historic city is proudly conservative but at night it turns into chaos. CCTV operator Sheila zooms in on a drunk urinating on a police car but soon spots a more menacing crime as one thug is seen brandishing a machete heading towards trouble.

King's Lynn is the birthplace of big brother. In 1987 this small country town installed the first CCTV system. And they continue to innovate with CCTV technology, because they need to. CCTV operators are stunned as a local lad glasses himself in the head and another punches his hand though his neighbor's windows only to disappear into the night. The police are determined to find him.

A CCTV Cities Special episode on Edinburgh's Hogmanay Festival. This is a massive police operation; their biggest task of the year. CCTV operators struggle to watch the streets when over a million people are partying hard, so they set up a special police unit just for the event. Mostly the people are well behaved and overall the Festival goes fairly smoothly.