New Broom

Change arrives at the top. Charlie Barlow has been promoted, and the chair he left is now John Watt's. The episode's title is no accident: a new broom in charge of the same old squad, and everyone in the building is working out what that means for them. A promotion changes the man who gets it, and it changes everyone who has to answer to him.

The ranks are all present to watch the adjustment. Hawkins is there as the deputy who knows the terrain, and Chief Constable Arthur Cullen hovers with the mixture of support and scrutiny that men in his position tend to bring. Adler is on hand too, played by John Franklyn-Robbins, along with the uniformed backbone: PC Henry Snow, PC Knowles and PC Young, played by Terence Rigby, Thomas Ellice and Stephen Berkeley. Willie Jonah's Edward Harrison and Graham Ashley's Roy Simpkins fill out the supporting cast.

Elwyn Jones wrote the episode and Pennant Roberts directed, and Roberts keeps the camera steady enough to let the faces carry the hour. With no single crime to hang the episode on, the interest has to come from the personnel, and that is where the show is always strong. Windsor's Watt is a different animal from Johns's Barlow, steadier, less theatrical, and the shift in tone is visible in every room he walks into. The change at the top is the whole story, and the episode tells it by showing rather than explaining.

But the best thing about the episode is what it doesn't do. It doesn't announce the new order with speeches. It simply lets Watt go about the job, and lets the viewer notice the difference for themselves. Hawkins watching a new man take decisions, Cullen weighing him up, the PCs adjusting their loyalties. It is a quiet hour, the kind the series does well, and a gentle way to mark the changing of the guard.