The Runner

Nine-year-old Johnny Duffield is running rings around Hartley. He is a tearaway in the proper sense of the word: small, fast, and thoroughly unimpressed by uniformed authority. Inspector Jean Darblay and her officers spend the episode trying to get a grip on him without crushing the boy in the process, and that balancing act is the whole show.

The child is the case, in the way that matters most. He is not a criminal and everybody knows it, which makes the official machinery feel faintly ridiculous, yet the show never laughs at him. Mr. Duffield is trying to raise him on his own terms, Jennie Randall is part of the picture, and the Naylor family, Jim and Cynthia, orbit the boy's adventures too. The station's men take turns with him, some better suited to the job than others. Nobody reaches for the easy answer, because with a nine-year-old there is no easy answer, only the long game.

Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Pennant Roberts directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, David Hargreaves her husband Tom, with David Ellison as Sergeant Joseph Beck, Noel Collins as Sergeant George Parrish and Mark Drewry as PC Roland Bentley. Julian Briercliffe plays Johnny with the right amount of chaos, Wendy Allnutt is Jennie Randall, Martin Matthews and Eileen Helsby are Jim and Cynthia Naylor, and John Rees is Mr. Duffield.

The episode treats Johnny as a problem to be solved with patience rather than punishment, which is very much the Darblay way. There is period charm in watching the force handle a difficult child with nothing fancier than time and talk: no referrals, no specialists, just officers making it up as they go. Kids like Johnny tend to be honest witnesses to the adults around them, and the episode knows it.

A small story, told with care. The running boy slows down eventually, and on this patch that counts as a win.