Taken for a Ride

Taken for a Ride brings Ken back to fire engines by way of a takeover. Albion Firetrucks, a local manufacturer, hires Texas Rangers to deliver the computer plans for its new high-tech prototype. On the way, Ken is knocked off his bike and the plans are stolen.

The person who picks him up is Shandy Tremblett, a Page 3 model who is staying at the Coaching Inn while she tries to improve her education. Then the prototype itself disappears, and Ken, a former fireman with a stake in the delivery that went wrong, sets out to find it.

What he uncovers is a piece of 1980s boardroom piracy. An American consortium led by Ed Slatterley wants to buy Albion, and the company's own director, Sir Freddie Blackton, who is also an MP, is helping it. With the plans and the prototype missing, the firm can be bought at a knockdown price, stripped of its assets and closed.

Ken finds the fire engine hidden in a barn, and the episode's ending is a publicity stunt worthy of Harry. Ken, wearing a brass fireman's helmet and a dressing gown, and Shandy, wrapped in a Union Jack robe, climb on top of the prototype to draw public attention to the scheme and press the government to allow a management buy-out instead. The plot collapses, and Blackton loses both his directorship and his seat in Parliament.

John Fletcher wrote the script, and Robert Tronson, who directed the previous week's episode, directs again. Camille Coduri plays Shandy, with Michael Medwin as Blackton and John Alderson as Slatterley.

The episode is one of the more topical of the early run. Takeovers and asset-stripping were part of the language of the decade, and the story sets them in a West Midlands manufacturing firm whose product Ken cares about. The resolution is in keeping with the series: Ken does not beat the conspirators in a fight, but shames them in public.

The weakness is Shandy. A Page 3 model trying to better herself is a reasonable idea for a character, but the episode uses her mostly as a joke about her job, and the closing image depends on the gap between who she is and what she is draped in. It is very much of its time.

The pleasure of the episode is in seeing Ken's old life and his new one come together. He is a courier because the brigade let him go, and here the courier work leads him straight back to a fire engine. IMDb users rate it among the better episodes of the second series, and the climax, an invalided fireman in a borrowed helmet on top of the engine he has rescued, is one of the clearest pictures the programme ever drew of its hero's divided loyalties.