Open And Shut

A domestic disturbance turns into a murder, and Chief Superintendent Barlow is sure he has an open-and-shut case on his hands. It is the sort of confidence that comes with years of experience, and it is exactly the sort of confidence this case is designed to punish. But before long he has to admit to himself that he was wrong. The title of the episode is the first sign that his certainty will not survive the hour.

From there the episode becomes a team effort. The puzzle resists simple conclusions, and it takes the combined skills of Barlow and the whole CID to prise it apart. The domestic origin of the case is never quite left behind; the killer came out of a household, and the team has to understand that household before it understands anything else. There is a particular pleasure in watching an experienced man confront his own mistake and then do the patient work of unmaking it, without the show pretending he is infallible.

Elwyn Jones and Allan Prior wrote it, Frank Cox directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, with Frank Windsor's Watt, Norman Bowler's Hawkins, David Lloyd Meredith as Sgt. Bob Evans and Susan Tebbs as Betty Donald. Harry Littlewood plays Det. Chief Insp. Morris, Richard Burrell Insp. Banks, Phillip Hinton PC Ward, Douglas Rain Jerry Proctor and Gillian Martell Betty Brewer. A solid supporting cast gives the case room to breathe.

It is a modest, well-made hour that knows its real enemy is overconfidence. The case turns out to be a puzzle rather than a verdict, and the solving of it depends on officers who are willing to be wrong before they are right. Nothing is open and shut until the evidence says so, and this time it takes its time saying it. For a series built on procedure, it is a quiet reminder that procedure exists because first impressions lie.