Hostage

A gang of bank robbers has done its homework. They know the timing of the collections at the local banks, and they have built their whole operation around that schedule. The task force, though, has done some homework of its own, and the pursuit ends the way these chases often do: with the robbers cornered and a siege under way. Their mistake, as it turns out, is that the police can read a schedule too.

Once the shouting starts, the demands are predictable enough. The gang want a car, and they want it now, and the negotiators on the other side of the line know that the longer the standoff runs, the more likely somebody makes a mistake. The demand for a car is the classic last throw of a cornered gang, and the episode does not hurry past it. But the script has something better than a shootout in mind. The robbers are ultimately thwarted by a procedural quirk, a small piece of paperwork or protocol that does what no amount of police firepower would have managed: it stops them dead. There is a quiet, very British satisfaction in watching a well-laid crime come apart on a technicality.

Frank Windsor's Watt and Norman Bowler's Hawkins run the operation, with Walter Gotell's Cullen overseeing it from a safe distance and Sgt. Evans on hand. The uniformed side is well supplied: PC Drake, PC Joe Duffy and PC Dent are all out in force. On the other side of the siege, Leslie Schofield's Frank, John Hartley's Steve and Derek Martin's Dick wait for a getaway that is never quite going to come. It is a siege story with the temperature kept deliberately low, and the patience pays off.

There is no heroics, which is rather the point. Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, and Brian Parker directed. The episode works because it understands that suspense does not need gunfire, just a ticking clock and two sides refusing to give in. The procedural quirk is the joke, and it lands.