Resolution

The stake-out on the silverware shop is going according to plan until PC Snow blunders into it, and the plan stops being a plan. In the confusion, it looks very much as though the officer on the job was in on the raid: the position and the timing read badly, and the coincidence is too comfortable. The squad has to ask itself the question nobody wants to ask about a colleague. Nobody wants it to be true, which makes the asking worse.

Barlow takes the accusation seriously, which is what makes the episode uncomfortable. A uniformed officer facing accessory charges is a departmental wound, and the investigation has to move carefully. But the answer, when Barlow finds it, has nothing to do with corruption. Family is the key, and the solution sits somewhere the paperwork was never going to reach. The episode is not interested in a quick exoneration, which is what keeps it honest.

Stratford Johns anchors it as Barlow, with Norman Bowler's Hawkins, David Lloyd Meredith's Evans and Terence Rigby's Snow carrying the strain. Walter Gotell's Cullen, Brian Hall's Drake, Bruce Purchase's Det. Sgt. Kershaw, Charles Pickess's Det. Insp. London and Derek Ware's Det. Sgt. Timothy round out the ranks, giving the hour a bigger footprint than usual, and Radar is present, as ever.

Elwyn Jones and Arnold Yarrow wrote it, Peter Cregeen directed. The episode earns its title: the resolution is quiet and personal, a long way from the headline of a crooked copper. What starts as an accusation about a raid ends as a story about family, and the hour manages the shift without losing its grip. For a series that can be hard and cold, this one is almost gentle. The whole hour runs on one accidental interruption, which is a neat trick in itself.