Yellowthread Street was a 1990 ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 police drama about detectives of the Royal Hong Kong Police based on the novels by William Leonard Marshall

William Leonard Marshall

William Marshall is an Australian author, best known for his Hong Kong-based "Yellowthread Street" mystery novels, some of which were used as the basis for a British TV series....

.

In the Yellowthread Street series, the detectives of the Yellowthread Street police station in fictitious Hong Bay, Hong Kong -- DCI Harry Feiffer, a European born and raised in Hong Kong; Senior Inspector Christopher O'Yee, half-Chinese, half-Caucasian American, and all neurotic; and the ever-bickering team of Inspectors Auden and Spencer -- attempt to find the rational basis for inexplicable and seemingly bizarre crimes. For example, in 1988's Out of Nowhere, DCI Feiffer must figure out why in the pre-dawn hours, four people in a plate-glass-filled van with Chinese opera blaring out the tape deck were driving on the wrong side of a deserted motorway, miles from the nearest on-ramp, before dying in a violent collision with an oncoming lorry. And why, moments before the collision, did one of the passengers shoot the van driver?

Thirteen fifty minute episodes were made.

Cast members included: Ray Lonnen

Ray Lonnen

Ray Lonnen is an English stage and television actor. His most prominent roles include Willie Caine in the cold-war spy drama series The Sandbaggers , and also as Harry Brown in the television mini-series Harry's Game .-Television career:Lonnen's early television appearances include The Power Game ,...

, Bruce Payne

Bruce Payne

Bruce Martyn Payne is an award winning English character actor and producer and was a member of the 1980's Brit Pack. Although he is best known for his villainous roles, Bruce Payne has played characters across the spectrum...

, Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor (Australian actor)

- Biography :Taylor is best known internationally for his role in The Matrix as Agent Jones. He also appeared in the crocodile horror film Rogue and stars in Australian thriller Storm Warning and the 2009 Australian movie Coffin Rock.-Filmography:...

, Tzi Ma

Tzi Ma

Tzi Ma is a Chinese American actor who has made numerous appearances in American films and TV series.-Life and career:Ma was born in Hong Kong...

, Mark McGann

Mark McGann

Mark McGann is an English actor, director and musician.- Acting career :McGann first appeared on stage in 1981 in the production Lennon at the Everyman Theatre and the London Astoria where he portrayed John Lennon, role which won him the first of his two Olivier Award nominations for best actor in...

 and Catherine Neilson

Catherine Neilson

Catherine Neilson is a British stage, television, and film actress, who was active from the late 1970s through the mid 1990s.-Career:...

. Tetchie Agbayani

Tetchie Agbayani

Visitacion Parado, who is better known by her screen name Tetchie Agbayani, is a Filipina movie and television actress, Mutya ng Pilipinas, psychology instructor and Playboy model. She appeared in a regular issue of German Playboy and a special American edition entitled "Women of the World"...

appeared in one episode.

Yellowthread Street series

• Yellowthread Street (1975)
• The Hatchet Man (1976)
• Gelignite (1976)
• Thin Air (1977)
• Skulduggery (1979)
• Sci-fi (1981)
• Perfect End (1981)
• War Machine (1982)
• The Far Away Man (1984)
• Roadshow (1985)
• Head First (1986)
• Frogmouth (1987)
• Out of Nowhere (1988)
• Inches (1994)
• Nightmare Syndrome (1997)
• To The End (1998)

Reception

The series was not well-received: one reviewer opined that "its chiefest goal seemed to have been to explore just how very badly a dramatization can corrupt and befoul the ideas and characters of a book"