Gorgeous

A well-known and respected councillor faces scandal and ruin over the love of the wrong woman, and the woman is credited in the cast list simply as Gorgeous. That tells you most of what you need to know about how the town sees her, and none of it is fair.

Councillor Jack Winterbottom, played by Derek Newark, is the solid public man undone by a private entanglement. The episode tracks the fall from grace with a certain grim satisfaction: the reputation built over years, the whispers starting, the civic structure beginning to wobble around him. Inspector Jean Darblay and her officers, Sergeant Joseph Beck, Sergeant George Parrish and PC David Gallagher, get drawn into the fallout as the scandal starts brushing against the law's edges. Around the councillor turns a cast with names straight out of a northern comedy: Crasho Harris, Hooker Wainwright, Mr. Long, Mrs. Webster. The episode knows they sound like a music hall line-up, and it uses them to keep the tone human.

Keith Dewhurst wrote it, Leonard Lewis directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish and Gerard Kelly as Gallagher. Derek Newark is Jack Winterbottom, Vicky Ogden is Gorgeous, Richard Piper is Crasho Harris, Henry Livings is Hooker Wainwright, Joe Gladwin is Mr. Long and Betty Alberge is Mrs. Webster. It aired on 31 October 1981, and by the second series the show was confident enough to build a whole hour around reputation and gossip, with no body and no robbery at the centre.

The title belongs to the woman nobody lets speak for herself. The episode is careful to keep her in view, not as the temptress of the councillor's own telling but as a person caught up in somebody else's downfall.

Respectability, the show reminds us, is a thin coat. One wrong choice and it comes off in the wash. The councillor learns that the hard way, and Hartley watches.