Time Expired

Sgt. Jackson spots ex-convict Ingram on the street, and that sighting starts the whole machine. Ingram was released not long ago, and the Task Force suspects he is hunting for a stash of stolen bullion, hidden somewhere unknown in the hours before he and his partner Thompson were arrested. The map lives in Ingram's head, and Ingram is not sharing. He has spent his time inside thinking about it, and now he is out and moving. Thompson is due out soon. The pair of them are playing a waiting game with a fortune.

The plot summary for this one carries a lovely dry note: there is a lot of hard, dirty, arduous work to be done finding that loot, and it is not the task force members who sweat over it. You can see the appeal of the setup. The criminals do the digging, the police do the watching, and the bullion sits wherever it sits until somebody slips. The sweat is the story: somebody is going to find the stuff, and the finding is going to be messy. There is a neat joke buried in the premise, and the episode is content to let it sit there.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, and David Sullivan Proudfoot directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, Norman Bowler is Hawkins, David Allister is Jackson and Susan Tebbs is PW Det. Con. Donald. Leon Eagles plays Ingram, Jonathan Holt is Thomson, John White is Peter Bruton, John G. Heller is Maitland and Gerard Norman is Watson.

Time Expired is one of those outings where the plot is close to a geometry problem and the pleasure is in the watching. The title is doing its work too: the clock on the bullion is running, and so is the clock on Thompson's release. Everyone is waiting for somebody else to make the first move. But the waiting is the fun of it, and the show has always been patient about that.