999 is a British docudrama

Docudrama

In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....

 television series presented by Michael Buerk

Michael Buerk

Michael Duncan Buerk is a BBC journalist and newsreader, most famous for his reporting of the Ethiopian famine on 23 October 1984, which inspired the Band Aid charity record.-Early life:...

, that premiered in 1992 on BBC One

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 and ran until 2003. The series got its name from the emergency telephone number

999 (emergency telephone number)

999 is an official emergency telephone number in a number of countries which allows the caller to contact emergency services for urgent assistance....

 used in the United Kingdom.

In the first series, each episode included two reconstructions of real emergencies, using actors and occasionally Buerk himself, as well as some of the real people involved in the emergency. By the second series, episodes of 999 included more reconstructions. While recreating an accident for an episode in 1993, veteran stuntman Tip Tipping

Tip Tipping

Timothy Tipping , better known as Tip Tipping, was an English film and television stuntman and actor.Prior to his career as a stuntman, Tipping served in the Royal Marines and 21st Special Air Service Regiment...

was killed in a parachuting accident. In 2002, it was announced that the series had been cancelled.