Never Hit A Lady

Highway piracy, whiskey-flavoured. Thamesford CID is chasing a gang who rob lorry loads of the stuff, and the prime suspect is a Scottish lorry driver whose movements fit the pattern. The whiskey lorries are a good, concrete detail: robbery in its old-fashioned sense, practised by men who know the routes. But the heart of the episode is Betty Donald. She volunteers for an undercover assignment posing as a prostitute, to win the suspect's confidence, and she finds out the hard way what her job can cost. The suspect's confidence is the goal, and her cover is the only way in.

The title carries its own grim joke, because nobody in this story is going to treat her like a lady, and the violence of the piece is aimed squarely at her. There is no glamour in the assignment: a woman in a dangerous room with men who have already shown what they do to people. Donald's nerve is the whole episode, and Susan Tebbs plays it straight and unflinching. The men around her treat the whole business as ordinary, which is what makes it chilling. The episode earns its title in the last act, and it does not flinch there either.

Elwyn Jones and Allan Prior wrote it, and Simon Langton directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow and Norman Bowler is Hawkins. Susan Tebbs is Donald, Terence Rigby is PC Snow and Timothy Craven is PC Banks. Neil McCallum plays Mick Harrigan, Margaret Brady is Peg Waller, Anthony Morton is Mann, Katie Fitzroy is Sister Cantwell and Richard Beale is Harry.

It is a hard watch in places, and meant to be. The show never makes the undercover work look clever or easy, only necessary. The men around Donald all have their own agendas, and the episode keeps her alone among them. But it is also, in its grim way, a tribute to her: the episode trusts Donald to carry it, and she does. She takes the risk anyway.