Moving On

Watt is running a patient, careful operation against a dangerous man, the sort of pursuit that needs time and silence to work. Then Sgt. Evans goes out on a night patrol, raids a student dosshouse, and the quiet collapses. It is a classic task-force collision: a big, delicate case blown sideways by a routine job that nobody thought would matter.

The episode is built on that tension, and it has a decent amount of fun with the fact that nobody is really to blame. Evans was doing his rounds. The students were being students. What the raid stirs up is enough to put the whole pursuit in peril. And the squad spends the rest of the hour recovering ground that should never have been lost.

Frank Windsor leads as Watt, with Norman Bowler's Hawkins, David Lloyd Meredith's Evans, Terence Rigby's Snow and Brian Hall's Drake filling out the team, and Julie Hallam's Forest lending official weight. Radar the police dog is on hand, because the producers understood that a dog improves any crime show. Peter Marinker's Mark Dean, Stephen Leigh's David Greenwold and Shelley Harris's Marion Greenwold supply the human complications around the edges.

Elwyn Jones and Arnold Yarrow wrote it, Keith Williams directed. The pleasure is in watching a well-laid plan cope with the messy reality of the streets, where a dosshouse raid and a major manhunt share the same pavement. Even the most determined investigation, the episode argues, is only one night patrol away from falling apart. There is comfort in that for the viewer, and none at all for Watt. The title does a quiet job too: everybody in the hour is moving on from something, and only Watt is trying to move toward someone. It rewards patience, and it is best watched the way the squad works it, one careful step at a time.