Apart from
Bruce Seton, who played the eponymous Fabian in every episode, the series had relatively few recurring characters in comparison with later British police series. Only
Robert Raglan as Detective Sergeant Wyatt was in any way a regular, appearing in 15 episodes. No other cast member featured in more than six episodes, as the particular skills of their character were called on to assist in a case germane to their speciality, such as the laboratory expert, the
psychiatrist, the
pathologist or the
graphologist. There were guest appearances from well-known actors such as
Kathleen Byron,
Elspet Gray,
Kieron Moore and
Michael Craig, but for the most part the cast consisted of relative unknowns.
Fabian of the Yard was one of the earliest BBC-shown British drama series to be shot entirely on film rather than broadcast live, with each episode featuring voiceover narration from Seton. Each case was a dramatisation of a genuine crime which had taken place in the
London area between the 1920s and the early 1950s, usually, although not invariably, a murder. Many of the cases featured had made national headlines in their day, such as "Little Girl", based on the murder of an
East London schoolgirl which had shocked the country in 1939. Each episode finished with an epilogue in which a shot of Seton at his desk dissolved into a shot of the real-life Fabian at the same desk, who then explained to viewers what had happened to the real criminal from the case they had just been watching. == Episodes Broadcast on BBC Television==