Ducks In a Row

Ducks In a Row is a comedy of missing authority. Inspector Kate Longton needs the advice of Sergeant Joseph Beck to deal with a troublesome freelance journalist, and Beck, on leave, has chosen this exact week to be unreachable. The episode runs on the friction between the problem and the absent solution, and it is funnier than it has any right to be. The missing sergeant becomes a running joke with a real edge, because the journalist is not going anywhere. The title promises order; the episode delivers its opposite.

Longton works around the gap, leaning on Sergeant George Parrish and PC Brian Kelleher while the journalist makes himself awkward, and the senior ranks hover: Edward Peel's Detective Chief Inspector Mark Perrin keeps an eye on the case. The details matter here: the advice is wanted, the advice is absent, and the day has to be got through anyway. Perrin's patience is worn thin in a way that suggests long practice. The town contributes its usual cast: Maggie McCarthy's Barbara Davies, Ken Sharrock's Bull Davies, Liz Edmiston's Ellen Hubbard and Hilda Braid's Soroptomist chairwoman. The Soroptomist chairwoman alone is worth the price of admission.

Don Webb wrote it, Marc Miller directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, C.J. Allen as Kelleher and Mark Botham as Sparks. Edward Peel plays Mark Perrin, Maggie McCarthy is Barbara Davies, Ken Sharrock is Bull Davies, Liz Edmiston is Ellen Hubbard and Hilda Braid is the Soroptomist chairwoman.

The episode is a small-scale pleasure, the story of a professional getting through the day with the wrong tools. Anybody who has ever needed a colleague on their day off will recognise the feeling. And the journalist, as ever, is the least of it. It is the kind of hour that makes you like everybody in it, which is harder than it sounds. There is even something faintly heroic about Beck's disappearing act.