For Whom the Chimes Toll

For Whom the Chimes Toll gives Ken his first client who may not be telling the truth. Major Hopkinson, a retired serviceman, collects antique chiming clocks. He has borrowed money from the wrong people, and the thugs he owes are now terrorising him. He asks Ken to protect him and his collection.

It looks like straightforward minding, the sort of job the first series has been training Ken for. But the more he sees of the Major, the less he trusts him. The question the episode poses is not only who is threatening the old man, but whether the old man has been honest about why.

That shift matters for the series. Until now Ken's clients have been more or less what they claimed to be, even when, like the Sandinis, they kept something back. Hopkinson is the first whose motives Ken has reason to doubt, and the job begins to turn from protection into investigation, the direction in which the whole programme was heading.

The second story belongs to Doreen. Her ex-husband, Jack Evans, played by Donald Sumpter in his first appearance, comes back into her life and wants a reconciliation. Doreen has to decide what she wants. Jack returns later in the series, and the strand gives Rachel Davies' character a history beyond the hotel desk.

The writer is Geoff McQueen, who created The Bill and Stay Lucky, and the director is Brian Morgan, the first of his two episodes. Maurice Denham plays the Major, with John Forgeham and Carl Duering in supporting roles.

The title is a play on Hemingway, and the clocks make it more than a pun. A collection of chiming clocks gives the story its own pressure: a tale about a debt coming due is told around objects whose job is to mark the passing of time.

The Major's rank and his collection give him the look of respectability, which is why Ken's suspicion carries weight. A retired officer is the sort of client a former fireman would instinctively believe. The episode's interest lies in the doubt itself. A series built on a man who will take anything legal needs clients who test where the law, and Ken's patience, run out.

It is a mid-table episode in IMDb users' estimation, and its main value is structural. It moves Ken one step further from odd-job man to investigator, and it opens Doreen's personal story, which continues when Jack reappears in Grand Expectations.