Z-Cars (sometimes written as Z Cars, and always pronounced 'zed', never 'zee') was a British television drama series centred on the work of regular beat police officers in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby near Liverpool, in the north-west of England. Produced by the BBC and screened on BBC1, it debuted in January 1962 and ran for 16 years until September 1978. Owing to an administrative quirk, for the first few years of its existence it was produced by the BBC's documentary department rather than the drama department.

The programme was created by writers Troy Kennedy Martin and Allan Prior with producer Elwyn Jones, and was a deliberate attempt to create a more realistic portrayal of modern policing than had been seen on British television before. This was a conscious antidote to the BBC's established police drama, Dixon of Dock Green, which portrayed a very 'safe' and 'cosy' image of a stereotypical 'British bobby'. The main writers included John Hopkins (who also became script editor) and Alan Plater. The writing team created a 'kitchen sink realism' style of scripting unknown on British television at that time. The Z-Cars theme tune was arranged by Fritz Spiegl from the traditional folk song Johnny Todd.

In a 2000 poll of industry professionals to find the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century conducted by the British Film Institute, Z-Cars was voted into 63rd place. It was also included in an alphabetical list of the forty greatest TV shows published in Radio Times magazine in August 2003.

A character named Ted Bowman, who appeared on this series, later reappeared on the Canadian detective series "Sidestreet" (1975).

Michael Caine (I) refused the part of PC Bob Steele as he did not want to be typecast in an TV series.

The Ford Zephyrs used in the black and white episodes were actually primrose yellow. This colour showed up better than white on the older type B&W film.