Oscar

An eleven-year-old girl named Janice Coop insists she has been told to steal washing from the launderette. Not by her family, not by any neighbour, but by a mystery man who calls himself Oscar. It is the kind of story that could be a lie, a game, or something worse, and Inspector Jean Darblay has to work out which before anybody else gets hurt.

The investigation turns on reading the child correctly. Janice, played by Susan Parry, is believable in the way children are believable when they are telling the truth and in the way they are believable when they are not, which makes her the most difficult witness in the building. Detective Sergeant Dave Melchett takes a hands-on approach with Detective Constable Timothy Daniels, while the family circle offers its own conflicting versions: Harold Coop and Rosemarina Coop, Auntie Vera, and Walter Pengelly all have something to say about the strange errand at the wash house. Somewhere in the noise is the truth about Oscar.

Keith Dewhurst wrote it, Derek Lister directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, with David Ellison as Sergeant Joseph Beck and Mark Drewry as PC Roland Bentley. Geoffrey Larder is Detective Sergeant Dave Melchett, George Irving is Detective Constable Timothy Daniels, Paul Copley is Harold Coop, and Sherrie Hewson, long before Benidorm made her a household name, is Rosemarina Coop. Mary Maddox is Auntie Vera, Ray Mort is Walter Pengelly and Susan Parry is Janice herself.

The show is at its best when it takes children seriously as people with interior lives, and Oscar gives Janice the dignity of a real investigation rather than a telling-off. The fear underneath the story, that a child could be steered into crime by a stranger, is handled without hysteria, which makes it land harder.

It is a domestic, character-driven puzzle, the kind the series built its reputation on. Sometimes the most baffling crimes are wrapped up in the mundane routines of ordinary life, and the launderette is as ordinary as it gets.