Off Duty

The report of an assault brings Inspector Kate Longton to the door of John Holden, and the case turns out to be the least complicated thing in the room. Off Duty is about the space between the professional and the personal, and the episode fills it with the weight of a relationship that neither party can quite put down.

The assault investigation gives the hour its structure, but its real subject is the history between Longton and Holden, played by Tom Georgeson. Every interview, every exchange, carries the residue of whatever they have been to each other, and the show trusts the audience to read the room. Around them the station goes about its business: Sergeant Joseph Beck, Sergeant George Parrish, PC Danny Sparks and PC Brian Kelleher, with the case drawing in Audrey Clark, Malcolm Page, Fred Naylor and Geoffrey MacDonald. Each of them gets a moment, and the episode keeps the balance between the mechanics of the inquiry and the emotional fallout running through it.

William Humble wrote it, Leonard Lewis directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, Mark Botham as Sparks, C.J. Allen as Kelleher and Tom Georgeson as John Holden. Diana Coupland, best known as Sid James's wife in Bless This House, plays Audrey Clark, Gawn Grainger is Malcolm Page, James Garbutt is Fred Naylor and David Scase is Geoffrey MacDonald.

The show has always understood that a single incident can be a lens for character, and Off Duty uses the assault report to look at the people behind the procedure. The procedural elements feel weighted with individual histories, which is exactly the series at its most dependable.

It is a careful, human hour. The assault gets dealt with. The other business, the kind that does not fit on a form, is left exactly where it belongs: unresolved.