These TV breaks, which also popped up throughout "RoboCop" -- and are not unlike television commercials -- provide a narrative device as well as comic relief.
Mr Mallon rose to fame with his introduction of US-style zero tolerance policing, earning the nickname "Robocop" for his uncompromising style as a detective superintendent in Middlesbrough.
But Sir Peter once told me how he had seen bobbies among the T-shirted crowds of a summer community fete looking more like Robocop than Dixon of Dock Green.
In this, we get a look at the XT-908 aerial drone and the ED 209, the defense droid that Robocop replaced at the beginning of the 1987 movie after it malfunctioned in a spectacular way. (A few deaths were involved.) We also get a shadowy glimpse of RoboCop sorry, the RC 2000.