Safe In The Streets?

This one goes straight at a subject most police shows of the time would have circled for a while first. A gang of skinheads are attacking young Pakistani men in the area, men who happen to be illegal immigrants. That last detail is what makes it cruel. The victims cannot go to the police without risking everything themselves, and the neighbourhood under threat is the real setting here, more than any station house.

Watt's problem is evidence. Somewhere in that frightened community is somebody who saw what happened and might be willing to say so, and the whole investigation becomes a search for that person. Fear is good at hiding witnesses. The episode understands that catching the attackers is only half the fight; persuading anyone to testify is the other half, and it is the harder one. Men who came here illegally have more to lose than the attackers do, and everyone knows it. And Watt's search is also a search for someone brave enough to trust the police.

Elwyn Jones and Allan Prior wrote it, and Paul Ciappessoni directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, Frank Windsor is Watt and Norman Bowler is Hawkins. Marne Maitland plays Nasim Khan, Leon Vitali is Henry Mardsley, Vicki Michelle is Reen and Barbara Keogh is Marie. George Tovey, Mohan Singh and Saad Ghazi fill out the surrounding faces: Mr Gedge, Mohammed Jinnah and Ali Suleiman.

Half a century on, the episode holds up better as a record than as entertainment, and as a reminder of how rarely the police dramas of its day said these things this plainly. The casting is part of the point: familiar faces, ordinary streets, a story that could have been an excuse for action but is allowed to be about silence instead. Watt does not get to fix the world. He just has to find one brave person to stand up in court.