New Arrivals

Jean Darblay has a new boss, and the pair of them get off to a spectacularly bad start. Chief Superintendent Albert Hallam arrives in Hartley with his own ideas about how things should run, and New Arrivals spends its hour watching the two of them circle each other like boxers in the first round. The casework is secondary; the clash is the story.

Hallam is played by James Grout, years before he became Chief Superintendent Strange to John Thaw's Morse, and he brings the same gift for bureaucratic menace that would serve him so well later. He outranks Darblay, he outranks her patience, and he clearly does not know what to make of a woman inspector who answers back politely and then does things her own way. The episode tests her methods and her nerve in one go. Around the two of them, the station keeps its head down: Sergeant Joseph Beck, Sergeant George Parrish, PC David Gallagher and PC Ian Shelton, with Chief Superintendent Shipley somewhere above the fray.

Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Derek Lister directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, David Hargreaves is Tom, James Grout is Hallam, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish and Gerard Kelly as PC David Gallagher. Ann Curthoys and Anthony Douse play Annie and Roger Howlett, Martyn Hesford is PC Ian Shelton and John Taylor is Chief Superintendent Shipley.

The pleasure of the episode is watching competence argue with rank. Darblay cannot win by shouting, so she wins by being right, slowly and repeatedly, until even Hallam has to notice. It is a quiet sort of television victory, and the series does it better than almost anyone.

A promising way to open the season. The friction between the inspector and her new superior is exactly the kind of pressure that makes good drama, and it would keep paying off all year.