Without Favour

Two problems, one week. Sgt. Evans, chasing a series of thefts, keeps coming up against a landlord who allegedly employs enforcers to collect his rents. The thefts are the excuse; the landlord is the problem. The enforcers do the collecting, the tenants do the paying, and the complaints Evans is chasing keep circling back to the same doorstep. Evans decides on the direct approach: a visit, a friendly chat, and a warning. It works about as well as you would expect, which is to say he steps on the landlord's toes and then has to answer for it to his own superiors.

Meanwhile Watt has a different kind of duty. He has been assigned to stand in for Chief Constable Cullen as guest speaker at the Kingsley Rotary Club, and the prospect of the speech seems to weigh on him more than most criminals do. The episode cuts between the two men's embarrassments with evident enjoyment. One risks his career. The other risks his dignity, and the show treats both with the same straight face. The two storylines never meet, which is part of the joke: each man is out of his depth in a different room.

Elwyn Jones and Alan Plater wrote it, and Frank Cox directed. Frank Windsor is Watt, Walter Gotell is Cullen, David Lloyd Meredith is Evans and David Allister is Jackson. Terence Rigby is PC Henry Snow, Donal McCann is Christopher Spence, Colette O'Neil is Mrs Marlow, Susan Maudslay is Brenda and Caroline Rogers is Sybil. Radar the police dog is along for the ride.

It is the rare episode where the biggest threat to a policeman is his own sense of what is right, and the show is honest about the cost. The friendly chat has consequences, for the landlord and for Evans. And the show's affection for Evans is obvious: he is the one who acts, and he is the one who pays.