Exercise

Barlow is in for a surprise. Chief Constable Cullen has considerable staff changes in mind for Thamesford CID, and he has summoned the officers of No 1 District Task Force to HQ to hear about them. Cullen has decided, rightly or wrongly, that the force needs shaking up, and the plan is well meant: give Charlie Barlow the best team available and let him build a task force that actually runs.

But plans of that sort rarely survive contact with the streets. Before the reshuffle gets anywhere, a woman is stabbed, and personnel matters are swept off the desk. The officers trade their paperwork for the reality of the job: an injured woman and an investigation, with a clock that will not wait. It is the kind of morning that makes reorganisation look like a luxury.

It is the show's favourite joke, played straight: the men upstairs are always rearranging the furniture, and the ground floor is always on fire. Nobody in the episode is surprised by this. That may be the most believable thing about it.

Elwyn Jones wrote it, Ben Rea directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, with Frank Windsor joining the team as Det. Supt. John Watt, Norman Bowler as Hawkins and Walter Gotell as Cullen. David Allister plays Sgt. Richard Jackson, David Lloyd Meredith Sgt. Bob Evans, and Susan Tebbs is Betty Donald. Terence Rigby is PC Henry Snow, Geoffrey Denton plays Chief Supt. Rowley, and Barry Jackson appears as Outwood.

There is a comfort in the shape of it. The force can plan all it likes; the job decides. The stabbing wins the day, and the staff changes go back in the drawer. The task force learns its first lesson, which is to be ready to drop everything, because the streets do not care about the rota or the organisation chart.