Who's Your Friend?

Sergeant George Parrish wants to know why Inspector Kate Longton has taken Sergeant Joseph Beck's name off the duty sheets, and he is not going to let the question go. Who's Your Friend? is built on the quietest of confrontations, the kind over paperwork and protocol that carries more weight in a police station than any shouting match.

The episode understands that the duty sheet is not administration. It is the public record of who is trusted with what, and the removal of Beck's name reads to Parrish, and to everyone else, as a statement. The confrontation between the two sergeants' chief and the older officer who feels the insult on his colleague's behalf drives the hour, and the inquiry unfolds against the station's ordinary business. PC Danny Sparks keeps the beat, Detective Chief Inspector Bob Leeming brings the CID perspective, and the community supplies the case's human face: Jimmy Stanley, Detective Sergeant Brian Settle, Albert Rogers, Freddie Cooper and a Detective in Pub, each with a connection to the paperwork that has suddenly become so interesting.

Tony Charles wrote it, Marc Miller directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish and Mark Botham as Danny Sparks. Kenneth Cope, best remembered as Marty Hopkirk of Randall and Hopkirk fame, plays Freddie Cooper, Michael McStay is Detective Chief Inspector Bob Leeming, Anthony Heaton is Jimmy Stanley, Barry Ewart is Detective Sergeant Brian Settle, Gordon Reid is Albert Rogers and Iain Blair is the Detective in Pub.

The episode's tension is in what is not said. Longton's reasons for the change sit behind her composure, and the show lets the viewer decide how much of it is judgment and how much is protection. The small moments, the episode argues, carry the weightiest charge in police drama.

It is a sharp, contained hour. In a station, the duty sheet is a battlefield, and everybody is standing on it.