One of the biggest problems with Britain over the last hundred years or so is that it is effectively run by a single city: London. The metropolis has become so large and populated by so many important head offices and such that Londoners now often appear to have difficulty in appreciating that any British people actually exist outside of its boundaries.

Television in Britain has been no exception with the major broadcaster, the BBC, being based in London since its inception in the 1920s. Economics as much as anything else have dictated that a large majority of the programmes the BBC has produced over the years have been based in or around the capital.

When the rival ITV network was set up in the 1950s, television programmes were suddenly being made in all regions of the country but few were set in specific areas outside of London for fear that the programme would not be marketable.

The groundbreaker was Granada's soap opera Coronation Street which began in 1960 and soon built up a large audience of dedicated fans. Set in the suburbs of the northern city of Manchester, this twice-weekly serial was the first to prove that television entertainment could be set in a specific British city other than London and still be popular with viewers everywhere.

London has still dominated British television programming, but other regions have had their moments. Liverpool is probably the second 'favoured' setting for both drama and comedy. I was born just a few miles from Liverpool and have worked in the city for many years, so although not a true 'scouser' (as Liverpool people are termed) I am, I hope, the next best thing and therefore qualified to comment on television's portrayal of the city and its people.

A seaport in the northwest of England, Liverpool became an official borough of England under the reign of King John in August 1207. Some of the original streets from that time are still present, such as Dale Street and Castle Street which intersect at the Town Hall. Liverpool became an important naval base in early battles against the Irish and has also enjoyed Britain's longest-running ferry service, which has crossed the River Mersey to and from Birkenhead for many hundreds of years, right up to the present day. The Liverpool - Manchester railway, which began operating in 1830, was the world's first passenger locomotive system.

Liverpool really flourished through slave trading in the 18th Century and in the 1840s was a popular refuge for those fleeing the famine in Ireland. In the mid-20th Century Liverpool was in danger of slipping into decline as its importance as a seaport grew less and less. But almost out of nowhere it sprang up in the 1960s to national and worldwide prominence. The main reason was a proliferation of Liverpool entertainers becoming successful, not least of them The Beatles whose worldwide fame really put the city on the map.

With a distinctive and (generally) likeable accent, Liverpool people who become famous also often tend to become famous for coming from Liverpool. Cilla Black and Billy Fury were others who conquered the pop charts, whilst comedians such as Ken Dodd and Jimmy Tarbuck were becoming popular personalities on television also. Even in sport Liverpool was dominant, with both the Liverpool and Everton football clubs finding success in both the FA Cup and the League Championship.

This combination of Liverpool taking off as a city of interest and Coronation Street alerting TV chiefs to the potential of northern-based dramas quickly manifested itself in Liverpool becoming the setting for what was to be one of Britain's most important and popular television dramas of the sixties, a police series called Z Cars. It was created by writer Troy Kennedy Martin who, through tuning in to police radio waves, realised that the police were really nothing like any he had seen portrayed on television previously. He wanted to set the record straight and Z Cars moved the police away from the homely image of the neighbourhood constable on his beat to a more realistic and gritty adventure where the policemen were rounded characters and not always perfect.

The setting was Newtown, a fictional area of Liverpool said to be based on the Kirby district, but in truth there is not a great deal to fix the action to Liverpool. A marvellous series Z Cars may have been, but it's setting could be just about any British city at all as there is a lack of regional accents or identifiable location work. In fact Z Cars was just like all the other BBC dramas of the 1960s - it was made in London.

Nevertheless, Z Cars' success ensured that the BBC and its rivals were prepared to use northern settings again. Another example from the 1960s is an edition of the popular The Wednesday Play, namely an instalment called The Golden Vision. This 75-minute production, written by Neville Smith and Gordon Honeycombe, featured a real slice of Liverpool life centring round a group of die-hard Everton supporters who travel to an away game together. Using Liverpudlian actors and capturing the pride, the humour and the passion of Liverpool men, it was one of the earliest examples of a television programme being made about Liverpool rather than just using the city as a backdrop. Ken Loach directed and the play is still remembered with great fondness by those who saw it back in 1968 but sadly even though it has miraculously survived, it has not been revived for another viewing.

Coronation Street included a Liverpool character in the mid-1960s by the name of Jed Stone. Played by Kenneth Cope, Stone was originally only intended to appear briefly. But such was the character's popularity that he was retained as a semi-regular for some years. Stone was a roguish character who spent time in jail but nevertheless had a charm about him and was much-loved by his landlady Minnie Caldwell who famously nicknamed him 'Sunny Jim'.

Years later the soap adopted another Liverpudlian, Eddie Yeats played by Geoffrey Hughes. Yeats lodged with Stan and Hilda Ogden, the most impoverished and lower class of the Street's residents. Yeats was common-as-muck but generally honest and likeable, again with the characteristic Liverpool humour. By the time he left the series in 1983 Hughes, like Kenneth Cope before him had become a household name on the back of his character's popularity with the masses. Both men subsequently declined offers to return to the Street.

1966 saw the arrival of a new sitcom called Till Death Us Do Part which broke new ground by drawing its laughs not from genuinely comedic situations but through the conflicting opinions of its main protagonists. At the heart of it all was Alf Garnett, one of British television's greatest characters, created by writer Johnny Speight and played superbly by Warren Mitchell. Staunch in his support for the traditional values of the great British Empire, Garnett was a working class man, the head of the household. Unfortunately the household includes his Liverpudlian son-in-law Mike (played by Tony Booth). Mike seems to be everything that Garnett despises - he is lazy, common and worst of all a supporter of the Labour Party. Deeper analysis shows the two men to actually be quite similar in many regards.

This was a hit series that ultimately ran for a decade, albeit with a gap of several years in the middle of it. Mike, labelled the 'scouse git' by Garnett, subsequently became one of the most famous fictional Liverpudlians in Britain. Although highly opinionated, he could sometimes talk a lot of sense when arguing with Garnett and at other times he could be equally narrow-minded. Being of the younger generation he was far more tolerant of such things as immigrants and so set a good example in this regard, but at no point during the run of the series did he ever look like he'd even attempted to make anything of himself, content to sponge off his in-laws.

In 1969 finally came a sitcom based in Liverpool, The Liver Birds from the pen of Carla Lane. The premise was a simple one - two single girls sharing a bedsit, with comedy resulting from their day-to-day troubles with family, money and boyfriends. Initially the two stars were Polly James and Pauline Collins but after the first season Collins had been replaced by Nerys Hughes. Later in the run James left and was replaced by Elizabeth Estensen.

The Liver Birds was fairly popular - it ran for ten years - and did have a lot of funny moments. But its portrayal of Liverpool life was a little off the mark. Lane, who went on to write further Liverpool-based sitcoms such as Bread (1986-91) and Luv (1993-94), seems to have had an obsession with writing about Catholic families, presumably drawing from her own experiences, but despite the presence of two huge cathedrals in the city, religion is not a dominant influence in the city. Also The Liver Birds suffers from having many actors trying to imitate the Liverpool accent and not always with success.

Carla Lane was actually drawing criticism from the people of Liverpool by the time Luv was shown as many had become tired with her continual presentation of god-fearing housewives loudly berating their husbands who invariably have a mistress. Lane returned to The Liver Birds for a 1996 revival but the moment had passed and even those who tuned in for a bit of nostalgia quickly abandoned it again.

The early 1980s witnessed what, for me at least, was the richest time for television drama centred around Liverpool. The brightest light was the bleak play from writer Alan Bleasdale, The Black Stuff about a group of tarmac layers. Although popular, it was the subsequent sequel series The Boys From The Blackstuff in 1982 that really made the most impact. Capturing the true situation in much of Britain at that time, the tarmac layers from the initial play are all out of work and struggling to make ends meet. It shows the gang doing a job on the side and getting found out by the Department of Employment.

Each of the five stories was powerful and told to perfection but the pick of the bunch was the fourth instalment, "Yosser's Story". Yosser Hughes, played by Bernard Hill, became the symbol for Britain's unemployed, as he fights his battle to find honest work, loses his wife, children, home and ultimately his sanity. It won Hill a BAFTA and is widely regarded as the finest piece of television drama Britain produced in the entire decade. Yet in spite of the soul-destroying situation, there is still that undercurrent of humour that so typifies the Liverpool way of life.

Bleasedale upped the comedy for his other major series Scully in 1984. He had created the Francis Scully character many years previously, used him on radio, in the Saturday morning childrens' programme The Mersey Pirate and also in a 1978 Play For Today. Scully was a scallywag Liverpool kid played by Andrew Schofield and the 1984 series centred round him in the last days of his schooling. Scully has dreams of playing for his beloved Liverpool Football Club and keeps imagining that he can see the team's star player Kenny Dalglish. In fact Dalglish appeared as himself in the series, often in bizarre situations wherever Scully happened to visualise him.

Very light and comical in tone, it mirrored Blackstuff in having a rather downbeat story and by the end of the series Scully is in despair, his dreams of playing for Liverpool shattered and his family life ruined when he discovers his mother is having an affair with the school caretaker he despises so much. Scully was made by Granada Television but aired on Channel 4. Liverpool pop star Elvis Costello performed the theme and also played Scully's retarded brother.

Another fondly remembered drama serial came from another local playwright, Willy Russell. One Summer centred around two Liverpool schoolboys. Billy, played by a young David Morrissey, comes from a rough neighbourhood, is frequently in trouble with the police and less frequently is in school. He is disillusioned with life and looks back on a school trip to the Welsh countryside as the only time he felt happy, so he runs away from home to return there, taking his illiterate friend Icky (Spencer Leigh) with him. The two boys from the big city initially create a lot of havoc in the peaceful countryside but settle down when they are taken in by a former teacher named Kidder, who unbeknown to them is a homosexual.

There are many laughs along the way but again he ending is downbeat - Kidder, whose only interest in the boys was paternal, is beaten up by the prejudiced policemen; Billy falls for a local girl which drives Icky back to Liverpool, where he is killed joyriding; Billy himself is ultimately spurned by the girl and arrested by the police who have now tracked him down - the series ends with them taking him home, leaving the viewer with the feeling that Billy's one chance to escape the life of crime he was destined for has now been taken from him.
Russell was disgruntled that director Gordon Flemyng cast two older boys in the main roles and disowned the series for many years. Viewers however loved it and then continued devotion has seen Russell mellow enough in recent years to finally allow the serial to be released on video.

Perhaps the most important foray into the lives of Liverpool folk, certainly the most sustained, has been the soap opera Brookside which began in November 1982. Screened on the less popular Channel 4, it seldom gauged huge audiences but has won much notice and acclaim over the years. Created by Liverpool writer Phil Redmond and made by his company Mersey Television, Brookside was innovative right from the first.

It used real houses rather than studio sets and differed from other soaps by not having the characters meet regularly in the local pub. Brookside Close was a cul-de-sac populated by 'normal' families. Whilst most of the storylines were typical of a soap opera - in the early days, for example, Paul Collins finds himself unemployable in his fifties and cannot come to terms with his son's homosexuality; Sheila Grant unexpectedly falls pregnant in her forties and is later raped; pensioner Harry Cross has to come to terms with the death of his wife and also his first grandchild; and the whole Close was under siege when armed criminals held out there - they were told and acted with a quality more usually associated with a prestigious play rather than a soap opera. Hardly surprising when writers of the calibre of Jimmy McGovern (later to pen Cracker) were on the staff.

Sadly Brookside's careful attention to quality was systematically eroded when, at the end of the 80s, the weekly episode count was increased and the best actors and writers were poached. There have been occasional moments when Brookside has still managed to deal with a subject before any of its rivals - wife beating and lesbian kissing being prime examples - but whilst the storylines have become increasingly sensational the soap has lost its audience and is due to end in the near future. Sad considering it started out as something vastly superior to either Coronation Street or EastEnders.

With the 1990s giving way to a proliferation of new channels, imported series, soaps and crime dramas at the expense of solid thought-provoking plays and genuinely funny comedies, iconic Liverpool programmes have had their day, for the time being at least, fading as surely as the fortunes of the city's two football clubs. Typically, Liverpool seems to have been represented on television primarily with its sense of humour shining through, something that is very much true to life as the city does possess a natural wit and charm. The bleak outlook of Boys From The Blackstuff was exactly right for its time, but that was twenty years ago now.

The legacy of the way Liverpool has been presented in programmes is that Liverpool people have been stereotyped as thieves or criminals - and certainly this has been supported by Z Cars, Jed Stone, The Boys From The Blackstuff, One Summer and even in other shows such as the classic comedy-drama series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet where the scouse character Moxy (Christopher Fairbank) has convictions for theft and arson. Even a fly-on-the-wall documentary series of the mid-90s, Hotel, which took viewers behind the scenes in the city's most prestigious hotel, showed Liverpool people in such a negative light that the hotel subsequently lost a lot of trade! Of course news items did not always help matters either - there is no hiding from the fact that the two great football disasters of the 1980s both involved Liverpool fans.

Whilst Hillsborough, which claimed 95 lives, was an unfortunate accident resulting from a lack of foresight, there was no disguising the fact that the lives lost at Heysel were a direct result of hooliganism from some sections of the crowd of that included Liverpool supporters. Hooligans have been more active at other sports grounds, but Heysel made the biggest headlines because of the death toll and so is less easily forgotten.

To label all Liverpool people as thieves is, of course, no more accurate than saying all Australians wear hats with corks dangling from the brim, or that all Scotsmen are tight with their money or that all Welshmen have a thing about sheep. Naturally a great many Liverpool people are affronted by this label, but in the last few years some relief - of sorts - has come by way of comedian Harry Enfield. His portrayal of Liverpool men, sporting football shirts, big moustaches, thick perms and constantly saying "Ay, ay" and "Calm down" is ridiculous but now recognised countrywide.

Liverpool people may quickly tire of the joke but at least it is overriding the image of the scouse thief. For the time being Liverpool people must retain their characteristic pride and community spirit until a television hit comes along that reports these very traits to the nation.