Rage

The night starts badly for Inspector Jean Darblay and gets worse. A disturbed young mother and her baby are in danger, and the rescue attempt is the whole of the episode: no subplots, no second case to tidy away, just one woman trying to save another before the night does its worst.

The officers around Darblay do what they can. Sergeant Joseph Beck is there, PC Roland Bentley is there, and PC Ian Shelton joins them, but the real work is personal. Darblay has to hold the situation together with her voice and her nerve while the mother, Kim Buckley, slips further out of reach. Around them turn the people of the crisis: Jeremy Buckley, Mrs. Roberts, and Dr. Holdaway offering what professional help a night like this allows. It is the kind of call that tests everything the job teaches and most of what it cannot teach.

John Foster wrote it, Tristan de Vere Cole directed. Stephanie Turner carries the episode as Jean Darblay, with David Hargreaves as Tom Darblay, David Ellison as Beck, Mark Drewry as Bentley and Martyn Hesford as PC Ian Shelton. Judy Liebert plays Kim Buckley, Christian Rodska is Jeremy Buckley, Jill Graham is Mrs. Roberts and Meriel Brook is Dr. Holdaway. Paul Bigley appears as one of the youths in the club, and the episode went out on 25 October 1980, partway through the first season.

The episode's strength is that it refuses to make the mother a case file. She is frightened, she is unwell, and she is somebody's child, and the drama stays with her rather than drifting off to the station house. Early television crime writing could do suspense without car chases, building it out of a closed room and a ticking clock and a woman whose voice is going to crack if somebody does not reach her in time.

Rage is a hard hour to watch and an easy one to respect. Some nights the job is not about catching anyone. It is about getting home before something breaks.