Vallance's Liberty

Vallance's Liberty is a burglary built out of good manners. A middle-aged couple, Terry and Gill Conroy, break down in a Jaguar outside the home of George and Irene Boxall, who offer them tea while they wait for the breakdown lorry. Terry repays the kindness by inviting the Boxalls to a Tyrolean night at Woodcote Park.

The Conroys never turn up. The Boxalls, uneasy, go to Ken for help. At Woodcote Park, meanwhile, a young woman called Meryl Spicer has arrived looking for Helen, claiming to be the daughter she gave up for adoption.

The pieces fit together once Ken sees what the invitation was for. The Conroys wanted the Boxalls out of their house, and Meryl was placed at the hotel to warn them the moment the Boxalls set off home. The reason is Tom Vallance, a bank robber just released from prison, who hid some plans in the house years ago when it belonged to him and now wants them back.

The trick fails, and Vallance does not let it go. He and Conroy break in, frightening the Boxalls, and Vallance attacks the walls with a sledgehammer until he finds what he is looking for. He then takes George and Irene to a deserted farm. The police surround the place, Vallance tries to escape, and Harry finds himself reversing at high speed along a farm track with Vallance's Land Rover behind him until the police recapture the robber.

Douglas Watkinson wrote the episode and Christopher Baker directs. David Horovitch plays Conroy, Brian Gwaspari plays Vallance, and Kate Hardie plays Meryl, with Reginald Marsh and Rowena Cooper as the Boxalls.

The strength of the story is its patient setting-up. A breakdown, a cup of tea and a party invitation are all small pieces of ordinary courtesy, and the audience, like the Boxalls, takes them at face value. The chase at the end is a good reminder that Harry, who spends the series planning in an office chair, can also drive.

The weakness is Meryl. Her claim to be Helen's daughter is a lever used against Helen, but the episode never explains how Meryl and Vallance could know a secret of that kind, or why Helen would not know at once whether she had a daughter. The fan site that logs the series points out the gap, and it is hard to disagree. The false claim does serve the plot, since it keeps Meryl inside the hotel, but only by asking the audience to forget it.

IMDb users rate it among the highest of the fourth series, and the reason is clear in its pacing: the long fuse of the first half pays off in a sledgehammer, a farmhouse and a car chase in reverse.