ITV (ended 2010)
It's the end of an era this week as Inspector Gina Gold leaves Sun Hill after an eventful six years in office. But of course it wouldn't be the same if she didn't leave without a bang! Will she be missed? What do you think?
I've never been happier to see the departure of a character from the show! I've been a long-standing critic of the character, from her would-be controversial introduction (smokes cigars in the office, is horrid to June), through her general incompetence. It's not the actress's fault, of course: the then-creative team gave her an implausible back story with Okaro to allow them to compromise the established station hierarchy and gliss over the glaring absence of a chief inspector. She was a regular on the show during the soap years, and was consistently portrayed in a wholly unprofessional light at a time when the station was crying out for leadership and discipline. Ongoing showrunning demands (where rostered actors are shoe-horned into scripts) mean that the character is frequently acting out of rank, notably in taking on the briefing and staff supervision roles that would properly lie with the duty sergeant.
Gold suffers badly in comparison with the benchmark uniform inspector, Andrew Monroe (1990-2002). Over six years, Gold has consistently demonstrated a complete lack of staff management skills, picking favourites (generally attractive young male officers) and bullying young WPCs. There is an old civil service mantra, that everyone can expect to be promoted to one grade higher than their level of competence. In real life, Gold would have been "found out" while struggling to cope with the responsibilities of a sergeant. It is implausible that, as she rampaged through the corridors of Sun Hill, she was subject to just one formal grievance procedure. With an inspector like that, it is little wonder that turnover (among those uniformed staff who managed to avoid being killed under her supervision) is so high.
