To Protect The Innocent

It is Christmas time, and Chief Constable Cullen has found a special gift for Charlie Barlow: an assignment at Her Majesty's prison in Kingsley, representing Thamesford CID at an occasion the chief superintendent would rather have skipped. The prison is not a pleasant place to spend the season, and Barlow knows it. He is uncomfortable from the start, and his discomfort only deepens when the visit leads somewhere nobody planned.

And a pub raid follows, along with the discovery of a case of child abuse. Against his better judgment, and with Christmas hanging over the whole affair, Barlow decides to do what he can to save the baby. The episode does not pretend the decision is easy, or that it fits comfortably with the rulebook. It simply shows a man choosing to act when the official version of his job says he should keep his distance. It is a rare episode that lets a senior officer be wrong-footed by his own conscience.

Elwyn Jones wrote it, Frank Cox directed. Stratford Johns carries the episode, with Frank Windsor's Watt, Walter Gotell's Cullen, David Allister as Sgt. Richard Jackson and David Lloyd Meredith as Sgt. Bob Evans. The supporting company includes John Normington as Jack Gregory, Donald Burton as Bill Dunkerley, Nerys Hughes as Mary Lester, a couple of years away from The Liver Birds, John Bryans as Dr. Raymond and Edward Jewesbury as Fairley.

Seasonal episodes can be a trap, all tinsel and good intentions. This one earns its Christmas setting by using it as pressure rather than decoration. The result is a story about duty against instinct, with a baby in the balance and a chief superintendent deciding which one wins. He makes his choice, and the episode lets him live with it. Not every case ends with the right person in custody; some end with the right person deciding to get involved.