Something Big

Regional Crime Squad has a problem and a plan. The problem is a huge illegal gambling operation being set up in the Kingley area by two known London criminals. The plan is to borrow Thamesford CID to do the work. Barlow spots the arrangement for what it is quickly enough: his officers are expected to sweat through the case while the regional men collect the credit. It is a familiar story in any force: the work and the credit rarely travel together.

The episode runs on that friction as much as on the gambling itself. Davey McBride and Benny Hulton, played by Godfrey Quigley and William Abney, are the operators the squad is after, and they make suitably slippery targets. But the real battle is between Barlow and Det. Chief Supt. Allan, John Woodvine's performance giving the visiting boss an air of calm that is somehow worse than open rivalry. Allan will take the glory if it is offered; Barlow intends that it should not be. The gambling itself is a means to an end here; the end is who looks good on paper.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, with Ronald Wilson directing. There is a dry comedy in watching professionals jostle for the credit, and the episode lets that play out without ever tipping into farce. Watt, Hawkins and Armstrong keep the actual policing moving, with Sgt. Evans and PW Det. Con. Donald in support, while the question of who gets thanked for it hangs over every briefing. The case is not about danger so much as credit, which is a different kind of tension entirely.

It is the kind of story the series did especially well: a case where the police are fighting each other's egos as much as the criminals. The gambling ring will be broken. The more interesting result is which office gets the pat on the back, and Barlow's refusal to let it be somebody else's is the whole game.