Standing Orders

PC Snow is on the lookout for an escaped prisoner when he runs into a strike at a local factory. One job becomes two in a hurry: the prisoner is still out there, and the picket line is turning aggressive. Nobody sent him to the factory; that is the way these shifts go. Task Force members move in and try to de-escalate a situation that is sliding past industrial dispute into something uglier.

But amid the crowd, Det. Insp. Harry Hawkins finds his own trouble. He steps on the toes of a contractor who takes offence at a policeman insisting on acting in accordance with the law. The contractor does not appreciate the reminder that the law applies to him like everyone else. It sounds like a small thing, and in the middle of a tense day it becomes a personal flashpoint, with Hawkins left defending the rules to a man who has no use for them.

Elwyn Jones and Alan Plater wrote it, Brian Parker directed. Plater's name on the credits is a promise of plain-spoken dialogue, and the picket line delivers. Stratford Johns is Barlow, Frank Windsor's Watt, Norman Bowler's Hawkins, with Susan Tebbs as Betty Donald and Terence Rigby as PC Henry Snow. The supporting company includes Richard Hampton as Simpson, Clifford Cox as Butler, Robert Hartley as Major, Robert Flynn as Elliott and Ray Edwards as Heslop.

The episode is at its best when it lets the two problems rub against each other: the hunt for a fugitive and the slow work of keeping a strike from becoming a riot. Hawkins' stand on the letter of the law is the bit that stays with you. The rules are usually there for a reason, even when the man shouting at you would rather you forgot them. It is not a flashy episode, and it does not need to be; the tension is in the restraint.