Who Says The War Is Over?

An elderly man living alone in an isolated house reports hearing a threatening voice calling from outside, and the voice was speaking German. Who Says The War Is Over? starts with that single unsettling detail and builds a slow-burn mystery out of it, the kind that reminds you that quiet corners of the countryside can hold the loudest secrets. It went out in September 1983, early in the fourth series' run, and the series' episodes did not always reach the screen in the order their numbers suggest, which suits a story about the past refusing to stay buried.

The German voice does not fit. It is not local mischief, not a prank with a walkie-talkie, and the officers who respond, Inspector Kate Longton, Sergeant Joseph Beck and Sergeant George Parrish with PC Danny Sparks and PC Brian Kelleher on the ground, have to work out what it means. The investigation draws in Peter Braithwaite, the man who heard it, his family's Billy Braithwaite, and a wider circle of Kenneth Brownhill, Rolf Arkosund and Roger Probert, and the tension builds as the threat's true nature edges into view. The title does the work: some wars never really end for the people who lived through them.

Douglas Watkinson wrote it, Marc Miller directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, Mark Botham as Sparks and C.J. Allen as Kelleher. Leslie Sands plays Peter Braithwaite, Daniel Chatto is Billy Braithwaite, Philip Goodhew is Kenneth Brownhill, Timothy Fulstow is Rolf Arkosund and Peter Childs is Roger Probert.

The episode is a skilled piece of slow-burn procedure, letting the isolation of the setting do the work of suspense. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide in a house at the end of a lane, and the show makes the most of it.

It is a reminder that local peace can be shattered by the most unexpected echoes. Even in Hartley, the past has a long reach.