Where There's Muck...

Sergeant Joseph Beck is in the hot seat, and the reason is the annual police dance. Where There's Muck... gives the show's longest-serving sergeant the most undignified of assignments: selling tickets for the event, and discovering that the people of Hartley are not queuing up to buy them.

It is a lovely, human premise for a season finale. Beck sweats over the ticket book while the station looks on with varying degrees of sympathy, and the episode folds the usual police work into the background of the great dance preparations. Inspector Jean Darblay keeps an eye on the operation, Detective Chief Inspector Jim Logan hovers, and Sergeant George Parrish, PC Peter Sims and PC Martin Helmshore go about the week's business. The community supplies its usual colour: Cyril Pybus, Pat Garfield, Millie Harding and Sidney Dorkins, each with a reason to be interested in the dance and none of them rushing to buy a ticket.

Chris Boucher wrote it, the man who gave Doctor Who and Blake's 7 some of their sharpest scripts, and Sarah Hellings directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, Tony Caunter as Logan, David Gillies as Peter Sims and David Straun as Helmshore. Harold Innocent plays Cyril Pybus, Del Henney is Pat Garfield, Ann Way is Millie Harding and Kenneth Waller is Sidney Dorkins.

The episode's warmth is in its ordinariness. No murders, no chases, just the everyday grind of the job with a community dance as the big event of the week, and the show treats the ticket struggle with the same seriousness it gives any investigation. Beck's discomfort is the engine, and David Ellison plays it beautifully, all grim duty and mounting despair.

It is a gentle way to close the season, a reminder of the steady routine at the heart of the series. Some weeks the only real drama is whether the sergeant shifts the last few tickets before the band strikes up.