Do Not Forsake Me

Do Not Forsake Me sends Ken to protect a man who has made a lot of enemies. Robert Messener is selling his house and his nightclub in a hurry, ready to leave for Cyprus, and he hires Ken to act as his bodyguard and chauffeur and to run errands connected with the sale. His previous minder, Freddy Tucker, walked out after being beaten up.

Ken is suspicious. Why is Messener leaving so suddenly, and why does everyone hate him? Then Messener's dogs are shot and his car is crushed, and he tells Ken that he suspects Sammy Robinson, a former employee now in prison for manslaughter, who blames his old boss.

Ken traces Sammy's ex-wife, Natalie. She says Sammy accused Messener of having an affair with her, and that Messener had Sammy beat up a rival nightclub owner, who later died. It is Sammy's brothers, not Sammy, who killed the dogs and wrecked the car. Sammy is due out of prison in a few days, and they think he will want Messener dealt with.

Messener sells his club to Douglas Cruikshank and sets out for the train. Cruikshank tips off the Robinson brothers. Sammy is waiting at the station, and he chases Messener through it and on to the railway line, finally cornering him in a disused tunnel. Messener grovels on the floor.

But Sammy, whom everyone thinks of as a psychopath, is angrier with his brothers than with Messener. He did not want them to act on his behalf. He tells Messener that he forgives him and wants only his share of the money from the sale of the club, and never to see him again.

At Woodcote Park, Harry's trouble is smell. Large oily patches keep appearing on the golf course and tennis courts, and the hotel starts to smell of sewage. He traces it to leaking drums of pesticide from a neighbouring farm owned by Ditton. Helen and Ken bring in the health and safety inspectors, and Ditton faces prosecution and a large compensation claim.

Paddy Fletcher and Richard LeParmentier wrote the script and Graeme Harper directs. Anthony Valentine plays Sammy, David Calder plays Messener, and the railway sequence was filmed at Thrumpton Power Station near Ratcliffe-on-Soar, about ten miles from Nottingham station, where the chase is supposed to start.

The tunnel is the best scene in the episode. Everything has led the audience to expect a killing, and instead the man the others fear is the one who has been wronged and is also the one who declines to take revenge. It changes the meaning of the whole hour, since Ken has been protecting Messener from someone who never meant to harm him.

The weakness is that Messener's offence, a beating arranged years ago that led to a death, is told secondhand, so the audience has little reason to want him punished or saved. The pesticide subplot is a simple, workmanlike comic counterpart.