You Can Go Home Again

The annual pop festival rolls into Hartley and turns routine policing into a logistical headache, while a celebrated former resident comes back to town to visit his daughter. You Can Go Home Again runs the two strands side by side: the chaos of the crowd against the quiet drama of a homecoming.

The festival work is the show's familiar turf: crowd control, lost children, the thousand small incidents that make up a big event's police operation. Inspector Jean Darblay, Sergeant Joseph Beck and Sergeant George Parrish run the shift with PC Peter Sims and WPC Birtwistle out in the middle of it, and Mrs. Blakey holding the station together. Meanwhile the returning resident, Chaz Fairbrother played by Glyn Owen, finds his visit complicated by the town he left behind and the daughter, Jo, who stayed. The two threads meet in the middle of the week, as the demands of the festival and the weight of the reunion pull at the same officers.

Allan Prior wrote it, the man who created Z-Cars, and Peter Moffatt directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish and David Gillies as Peter Sims. Glyn Owen plays Chaz Fairbrother, Juliet Cadzow is Jo Fairbrother, Rosalind Wilson is WPC Birtwistle, Mary Wimbush is Mrs. Blakey, Simon Watkins is Trev and Stuart Milligan is Gary.

The episode's rhythm comes from the contrast: the noise and mud of the festival against the careful, quiet business of a man trying to find his way back to his own family. Both are police business in their way, and the show treats them with equal seriousness.

It is satisfying viewing when the demands of modern community life collide with personal milestones, and this hour manages both without dropping either. You can go home again, the title says. The trick is surviving the visit.