Inspection

Inspection is the episode where nothing happens and everything happens. Hartley station is preparing for a visit from the Chief Constable, and the whole force is suddenly aware of how its everyday habits will look to a man in the highest office. Files get tidied and uniforms checked, and the ordinary business of policing carries on under the shadow of the great and the good. The visit is the kind of event that makes a station examine its own reflection, and the episode enjoys the examination. Nothing about the visit is a secret, which is part of the joke.

Inspector Kate Longton runs the station through its paces with Sergeant Joseph Beck and Sergeant George Parrish, while PC Brian Kelleher and PC Danny Sparks try to look busy in the right way. Every uniform is a little straighter, every answer a little more rehearsed. The hierarchy assembles for the occasion: Edward Peel's Detective Chief Inspector Mark Perrin, Robert Glenister's Inspector Roger Beavers, Nicholas Courtney's Superintendent Austin, Alec Linstead's Chief Constable and Joe Holmes's Old Man. The Old Man alone suggests a station full of characters the paperwork will never capture.

Tony Charles wrote it, Graeme Harper 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, Robert Glenister as Roger Beavers, Nicholas Courtney as Austin, Alec Linstead as the Chief Constable and Joe Holmes as the Old Man.

There is a comic vein running through the episode, because anyone who has ever cleaned their desk before a manager visits will recognise the panic. But the show keeps the drama honest underneath; the station's real work does not stop for the inspection, and sometimes the visitor sees more than the polish. Longton carries the episode the way she carries the station, with the least fuss and the most nerve. The inspection, when it comes, goes about as well as inspections ever do. A warm, funny, knowing hour.