Signed Off

PC Felly finds a robbery in progress and pays for it. He is badly beaten, and then comes the second, crueller part of the story: nobody realises. Several hours pass before the force works out that something is wrong, and the episode is built on that delay, hour by hour, as Felly lies hurt while the police machine goes about its ordinary business.

Ray Lonnen plays Felly, and the performance carries the episode. He is the man at the centre of a procedural failure, and the show has the honesty to look at the failure rather than tidy it away. It is the kind of role that lets an actor show his quality without saying much, and Lonnen does exactly that. Inspector Morris, played by Anthony Bailey, is the officer who has to face the consequences, and Sergeant Edser, played by Brian Hayes, stands in for the small daily decisions that add up to a bad night. Around them, Watt and Hawkins work the case once the alarm is finally raised, with Snow, Nesbitt and Knowles in support. The supporting cast includes Bob Hoskins, several years before The Long Good Friday made him a star, as Parker, and Dave Hill as Lashman.

Elwyn Jones and Arnold Yarrow wrote the script, Kenneth Ives directed. The episode is one of the show's best examinations of how the machinery of policing can fail the people inside it, often without any malice at all, just the simple assumption that everything is under control.

"Signed Off" is an uncomfortable hour, and it earns the discomfort. The title carries a double edge, paperwork signed off in the ordinary way while a man lies beaten and unnoticed. It is the kind of story the series told better than most, patient, angry in a quiet way, and utterly sure of its own details.