Full Circle

Full Circle ends the first series by taking Ken back into a fire. It is a few days after Christmas, and he comes home from London to find his market garden ruined. Harry has decided to sell The Grand and buy a bigger hotel. Doreen has accepted a job running a friend's bar in Spain. The world the series has built over thirteen weeks is coming apart.

The case concerns a carpet factory owned by two brothers, Leon and James Karadia, which has suffered more than its fair share of fires. The police, the fire brigade and the insurers all suspect arson. Harry has his own interest: one of the carpets lost in the latest blaze was ordered for The Grand, and he has overstated its value on his insurance claim. For once, the comedy of Harry's schemes comes with a small dishonesty attached.

Ken suspects that the fires are connected to the Karadias, and he starts to follow the man he believes is setting them. The trail leads to the hotel that Harry is about to buy. Ken catches the arsonist in the act, and the two of them escape from the fire with their lives, but only just.

The title is exact. The series began with Ken losing his lungs in a burning house, and its last episode puts him back inside one. Three of the regulars depart with the episode: Rachel Davies' Doreen, Gordon Warnecke's Hanif and Joan Scott's Ethel. The opening episode of the second series confirms that Doreen has gone to Spain.

Guy Meredith, who wrote Unto Us Four a Son, provides the script, and Laurence Moody, who directed the first episode, directs the last. Geoffrey Hinsliff plays a station officer, a reminder of the service Ken has left. It was also the last episode under the original producer, Kenny McBain, who moved on to Inspector Morse.

The weakness is in the detective work. The connection between the arsonist and the factory owners is Ken's suspicion, and the episode is more interested in the fire than in proving who paid for it. The climax is strong because it is personal, a damaged man going into smoke again, but the investigation that leads there is thin.

As a close to the first series, however, it is purposeful. It clears the ground. The Ponderosa is finished, The Grand is to be sold, and Doreen is leaving, and the second series opens with Harry at the Coaching Inn and Ken running a motorcycle courier firm. Full Circle is the point at which Boon stops being a story about an invalided fireman getting by and becomes a story about two men in business.

It also shows the series' sense of proportion. A comedy-drama could have ended its first year with a joke. This one ends with its hero risking the lungs he has left, and that seriousness is what made the lighter episodes around it count.