Walking Off Air

Walking Off Air starts the fourth series by moving everything to Nottingham. Ken has opened Boon Investigations in a small office near the Castle, and his first client is Gerry Anscomb, the manager of a local radio station, Sherwood Sound. Anscomb wants him to mind Eddie Cotton, the station's loud young DJ, who turns up to work drunk or not at all, in time for a charity telethon at the weekend.

Ken does not manage it. Eddie gives him the slip at a snooker club and goes off with Donna Delaney, a woman in cowboy boots, who drugs him at a nightclub. He makes a spectacle of himself, his photograph appears in the local paper, he misses his show, and the managing director, Bill Stone, sacks him on the spot.

Ken suspects the drug, and since he is no longer on the payroll he needs Laura Marsh, the station receptionist, to get him back into the building. His first suspect is another DJ, Tony Lyons, who stood in. Then he learns that Anscomb is leaving at the end of the month, and that Donna works for the station Anscomb is joining.

He and Laura set a trap, passing Donna a message that seems to come from Anscomb and asking her to meet him at the telethon. When the two are seen together, the game is up. Anscomb admits that he ruined Eddie deliberately, because he wanted him at the new station and knew he would not come of his own accord. Eddie gets his job back and the telethon goes ahead. Laura is sacked for letting Ken in, and Ken offers her work as his secretary.

At Woodcote Park, Harry has gone into partnership with a widow, Helen Yeldham, to run a hotel and country club, and he has grand plans for tennis and golf tournaments. They are stopped by David Tredegar, an eccentric naturalist, who finds that the meadow Harry wants for tennis courts is home to protected natterjack toads. A neighbouring farmer's plan for a commune is blocked too.

Guy Meredith wrote the script, Frank W. Smith directs, and the series is now shot on videotape in Central's Nottingham studios. Elizabeth Carling and Brigit Forsyth join as Laura and Helen. The title sequence has changed with the city: Ken's soul leaves his sleeping body and rides round Nottingham on White Lightning.

As an opening, the case works because the villain's motive is odd. Anscomb ruins a friend's reputation in order to keep him, and the line the episode draws, that this is what friendship amounts to, is the joke. The toad subplot is a pleasant, mild counterpart, with Harry's ambitions defeated by something he cannot bribe or charm.

The weakness is speed. Laura's sacking and her new job at Ken's agency are settled in a couple of scenes, as though the series were anxious to get its regulars in place. But the move succeeds in giving the programme a fresh setting and a fresh start without losing its tone.