Welcome To The Club

Two cases share the hour, and they could hardly be more different. Watt is tipped off that the council is running a land scam with a local developer, which is corruption with a handshake and a set of plans. Meanwhile Evans and Snow are chasing an epidemic of wireless robberies, which is crime of a much noisier, clumsier sort. The contrast is the point of the episode, and the writers, Elwyn Jones and Alan Plater, keep both threads moving without letting either shortchange the other.

The land business is the more interesting of the two, because it is the kind of thing that never quite shows itself in a single frame. A deal here, a favour there, a decision that goes the wrong way. Watt's investigation has to move through council offices and developer boardrooms, places where everyone has a version of events. Getting anyone to admit to the version that matters is most of the battle. The wireless robberies give the uniformed side something to get their hands on, and the two threads meet in the middle of the town that both crimes are picking at.

The cast is a strong one. Michael Gambon, long before he became a household name, plays James Cranley, and it is a pleasure to watch him working his way through an early, serious role. Jeffrey Segal, John Kane and David Savile fill out the supporting ranks, with the regulars doing their usual steady work around them. David Wickes directed.

"Welcome To The Club" is that reliable thing, an episode about how different kinds of crime pull on the same stretched resources. It is not the show at full throttle, but the land scam gives it a sour, contemporary edge that the wireless robberies alone would not have supplied. The title, you suspect, is aimed at the villains, and the joke lands.