Cuffs Context

Gender:

• Women are not always the damsel in shows anymore - juxtaposes The Avengers
• Masculinity is now flexible and people don’t have fixed/extreme opinions

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Sexuality:

• Equality Act 2010 made discriminated against queer people illegal
• Same-sex marriage was made legal in 2014 (a year before the show aired)
• Homophobia is not as prevalent

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Ethnicity:

• Shows now have more diverse casts

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Police:

• Police are not well liked due to brutality
• They are often seen as a joke
• The episode reinforces and contradicts this

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Application:

Gender:

• DS Jo Moffat is an atypical female character with high status in the police force.
• PC Jake Vickers is not stereotypically masculine and is portrayed as slightly weak in the episode
• PC Ryan Draper is stereotypically male mostly in the episode but in the first scene (nudist beach) he is portrayed as weak as he cannot even control a petty crime; this also presents the police as a joke.

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Sexuality:

• PC Jake Vickers is homosexual. It is not made a big deal of and his romantic journey is treated the same as a heterosexual one.

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Diversity:

• PC Ryan Draper - Black
• PC Donna Prager - Half Japanese, Lesbian
• PC Lino Moretti - Half Italian
• PC Mischa Baig - Indian
• PC Jake Vickers - Gay

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Racism:

• The episode included a hate crime against someone who was Indian
• The show is comedic and addresses serious issues like this

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Police:

• Nudist beach scene - police is presented as a joke and the serious job is used for a comedic scene
• Jake’s lack of experience and weakness presents the police negatively
• Ryan addresses police brutality and makes an effort to make sure that the police isn’t portrayed worse than they already are - ‘no respect from the public, press printing lies’

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