Coins

A burglary at Major Adams' fallout shelter should be the dullest entry in the week's crime book, the sort an inspector signs off without breaking stride. PC Roland Bentley thinks otherwise. He takes his hunch to Inspector Jean Darblay: a woman was involved in the break-in. He is almost right, and the distance between almost and right is what the episode spends its hour on.

Bentley is the story here. He has looked at the scene closely enough to notice something out of place, and he refuses to let it go even when the obvious culprit is standing there with a workable story. Darblay listens to him, which matters more than it looks on paper. A junior officer with a theory and a chief who lets him run with it: the show understood early that this partnership was going to be its engine. The shelter itself is a wonderful relic, a piece of Cold War kit bolted onto an English garden, and whatever was lifted from it carries a whiff of secrets nobody should be keeping.

Ray Jenkins wrote it, Pennant Roberts directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, Mark Drewry is Bentley, with David Ellison as Sergeant Joseph Beck and David Hargreaves as Tom Darblay. George A. Cooper plays Major Adams, keeper of the shelter, and around the case circle Shirley Dixon's Kay Brown, Deirdre Costello and David Boyce as Pat and Bob Nicholas, Peter Davidson's Councillor Blake and Deanna Brown's Carol Bampton.

The truth, when it surfaces, is a little more complicated than anyone's first guess, which is Bentley's vindication and his comeuppance in one. Almost right is a fine place to start in police work. The episode makes a full hour out of the difference, and Bentley comes out of it with his reputation intact and his humility freshly serviced.

Coins is a small story told properly, the kind the series would build a reputation on.