Talk to Me

Talk to Me begins in pursuit and ends in suspicion. Sergeant Joseph Beck and PC Danny Sparks answer a break-in call only to watch the suspect slip away, and the episode turns on what Beck does next. The burglar is barely a presence; the couple are the case. It is an opening that promises a chase and delivers a conversation.

But Beck, left with nothing but the couple's nearness, fixes on them: Mark Wing-Davey's John Thorpe and Denis Bond's Peter Dobson, with Paul Copley's Arthur Steadwell and PC Bill Trevor, played by James Mansfield, filling out the picture. Steadwell, in particular, has the look of a man with a story he is not telling. The courting couple are not suspects exactly; they are a theory looking for legs. Inspector Kate Longton and Sergeant George Parrish support the hunch, and Detective Chief Inspector Mark Perrin (Edward Peel) keeps the operation on its rails. The suspicion is not evidence, and the episode is honest about the difference.

Tony Charles wrote it, Michael Owen Morris directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, C.J. Allen as Kelleher, Mark Botham as Sparks, Edward Peel as Perrin, Mark Wing-Davey as John Thorpe, Denis Bond as Peter Dobson, Paul Copley as Arthur Steadwell and James Mansfield as PC Bill Trevor.

The chase gives the episode its opening energy, but the real work is quieter. It is about reading behaviour and testing stories, and about the wait for somebody to trip over their own account. Beck has a nose for it, and the show trusts that. Nobody shouts in this episode; the volume stays low and the stakes stay real. Longton's role is to keep the whole thing from running off the rails. The resolution arrives the way it should, through patience rather than luck. A solid, unflashy hour that earns its title by making the talking the point, and all the better for being quiet.