Power Of The Press

Chief Constable Cullen has decided the force needs the press, which is the kind of decision that sounds sensible until the journalists actually arrive. Evans and Jackson draw the special assignment: chaperones for a reporter from The Times, a man Cullen suspects is after a scandal and plans to use Thamesford Constabulary as the scapegoat. Cullen's reasoning is never quite spelled out, which is probably the point: he is using the journalists, or they are using him, and the episode keeps you guessing.

What begins as a cat-and-mouse game turns nasty when Det. Insp. Hawkins discovers the press are looking at apparent cases of corruption inside the police ranks themselves. But everyone is walking on thin ice now. Cullen has his own game in mind, the officials caught in the crossfire have their own interests, and the truth starts to look negotiable. A force being investigated for corruption cannot afford to look like it is covering up, and it cannot afford to look incompetent either.

Elwyn Jones wrote it, Brian Parker directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, Norman Bowler's Hawkins does the digging, and Walter Gotell's Cullen keeps his cards close. David Lloyd Meredith and David Allister are the two sergeants stuck with the reporter. Ronald Radd plays Alderman Arthur Whitaker, Gary Waldhorn, years before Brush Strokes, Derek Watson, Margot Thomas Mrs. Alice Robins, Kenneth Waller James Potter and Yvonne Ball appears as PW Det. Con. Fallon.

The press are rarely the villains of the piece in television from this era; usually they are the nuisance with the camera. This one lets them be genuinely dangerous. The result is a wary, uncomfortable hour about who polices the police, and nobody comes out of it entirely clean. The thin ice holds just long enough for the hour to end, which feels about right for the subject.