Mates

PC Danny Sparks is thinking about quitting the force, and Inspector Kate Longton has decided to buy a house in Hartley. Mates runs the two private decisions through the week's police work and finds, as the show usually does, that the personal and the professional are the same story.

Sparks' crisis is the emotional core. Mark Botham plays the young constable wrestling with whether the job is worth the rest of his life, and the station's reaction, somewhere between sympathy and the gallows humour of people who have all considered the same thing at 3am, rings true. Longton's house purchase is the quieter thread: the new inspector putting down roots in a town that is still getting used to her, and the small statement it makes to a station that values commitment. Sergeant Joseph Beck and Sergeant George Parrish hold the line, John Holden moves through the background, and the community's Jessie Cadwell, Thomas Cadwell, Mrs. Tinkham, Mr. Swarbrick and Edwin Fawcett populate the week with the usual texture.

Julia Jones wrote it, Peter Cregeen directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish and Mark Botham as Danny Sparks. Tom Georgeson plays John Holden, Yvonne Nicholson is Jessie Cadwell, Max Mason is Thomas Cadwell, Maggie Ollerenshaw is Mrs. Tinkham, Ken Sharrock is Mr. Swarbrick and Dickie Arnold is Edwin Fawcett.

The episode's argument is that a quiet life decision can weigh as heavily as any arrest. Buying a house, or walking away from a career, are the moments that shape a person's whole map, and the show gives them the room they deserve.

It is a warm, contained hour, the kind that reminds you why the series endured. The mates of the title are the ones who stay, and the ones who make staying worthwhile.