• An Instinct For Murder
• Little Green Men and Other Stories

Created by Chris Boucher, the ex-Blake's 7 script editor and former writer for Doctor Who, Star Cops was a brief, nine-episode series that was first shown in the UK in 1987.

The lead character was the abrasive Nathan Spring (David Calder) who, at the end of the first episode, was effectively given no option other than to assume command of the International Space Police Force, or Star Cops as they had been dubbed by the press.

With the action swiftly moving from the Charles De Gaulle space station featured in the first episode to a base on the moon (Spring had trouble adjusting to zero gravity), the series really moved into top gear with the introduction of Colin Devis (Trevor Cooper) and Pal Kenzy (Linda Newton) — two misfit officers who proved to be ideally suited to the rigours of policing outer-space.

With stories ranging from murder through to drugs smuggling and fake Martian artifacts, the series set out from the beginning to avoid the use of aliens and the usual sci-fi trappings, instead trying to be a police show that just happened to set in outer space. This down-to-earth approach to science fiction in outer space is one that has also been tried on a number of other UK series such as Moonbase 3, Jupiter Moon and Space Island One, but has never really been attempted in the United States.

Unfortunately, like so many other good series which get cancelled early, the fates appeared to be against Star Cops from the outset, when the penultimate episode, written by Philip Martin, was abandoned shortly before recording due to industrial action at the BBC. Things only got worse for Star Cops when it was scheduled in the middle of summer. Unsurprisingly, the series didn't perform well — a great shame as the stories were never less than interesting and the modelwork was some of the very best ever seen on the BBC.

Since its cancellation the series has been shown a number of times on satellite channels in the UK, but has never received a terrestrial repeat. In 2006 Star Cops was one of six UK sci-fi TV series featured in The Cult Of... documentary series on BBC Four, which looked back at a different programme in each of its thirty-minute episodes.

The complete series was released as a DVD box set during 2004, although this has now been deleted.