The Big Tip-Off

The Task Force's best information this week comes from a barmaid. She works at an aerodrome and has picked up inside knowledge about a raid that is coming off, and the whole episode turns on whether she can keep her personal feelings out of it while the police close in. You can see why the writers liked her. She is the one person in the story who knows something, wants something, and may not stay on the side she started on. But the barmaid is not a bystander in this affair, and the episode does not pretend she is.

The other unknown is the getaway driver, a woman with almost no experience and a ruthless streak. Whether she helps the job along or sinks it is the question that keeps the whole operation awake, and it gives the raid its edge. Nothing here is guaranteed, least of all the quiet ones. The squad have to work the intelligence and the people at the same time, and the two keep tripping over each other. The build-up takes its time, and the show is in no hurry, which suits a case that depends on waiting.

Elwyn Jones and Allan Prior wrote it, Eric Hills directed. Frank Windsor's Det. Supt. Watt heads the team, with Norman Bowler's Det. Insp. Hawkins, David Lloyd Meredith's Sgt. Evans and Terence Rigby's PC Snow doing the legwork, while Heather Stoney's PW Det. Sgt. Green holds the operational side together. Alex Scott's Tommy, Clare Kelly's Dot Melling, Jenny Twigge's Mickey, Del Henney's Chuck and David Morrell's Simmons fill out the world around the job.

The pleasure of this one is an ordinary setting doing unglamorous work. A raid is a raid, but a barmaid's loyalties and a driver's nerve decide how it lands. That is the sort of policing the show always believed in: the case resting on people rather than paperwork. And the paperwork catches up later.