Like Any Other Friday...

The Thursday Man has kept the Thamesford task force busy for weeks. The burglar strikes on the same night every time, and the team is hard on his trail when he hits again, this time at the home of a former war hero. It should be another round of the same old game, but something is different about this particular Friday. A burglar with a brand is a gift to the newspapers and a headache to the CID.

Barlow is out chasing the hint of an armed robbery, while Hawkins and Jackson work the latest in the Thursday night thefts. When the detectives go through the war hero's house they find a secret that has nothing to do with stolen silver: handguns, and the sense that the burglaries are cover for something more serious. Stolen handguns have a way of becoming someone else's tragedy. Barlow, meanwhile, is in for a surprise of his own.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Vere Lorrimer directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, Frank Windsor's Watt, Norman Bowler's Hawkins, with David Allister as Sgt. Richard Jackson, David Lloyd Meredith as Sgt. Bob Evans and Terence Rigby as PC Henry Snow. Ric Felgate plays Sgt. Gill, Michael Gaunt Det. Con. Timms, William Marlowe Alec Patterson and Maurice Good James Grogan. The usual faces are all present, which matters more than it might seem.

But the pleasure is in the accumulation. A familiar criminal keeps a steady routine, and then the handguns surface and the case quietly changes size. The episode does not hurry, and the pacing is the point. By the end the title makes sense: no Friday is quite like any other once you know what is hidden in it, and the surprise waiting for Barlow lands all the better for being earned rather than announced.