Observation

An armed robber breaks out of jail, and the tip-off lands with Hawkins before the man has got comfortable. Dave Riley is in the Kingley area, and when Hawkins takes a flat across the street and watches, he sees exactly what he feared: Riley and several accomplices, sitting down to plan another armed robbery. But a man like Riley does not come quietly, and the squad has been waiting for this call.

The episode's strength is that it keeps the whole thing at a distance. Hawkins watches, the watchers watch, and the planning goes on in rooms where the police can see everything and stop nothing. It is surveillance as drama, which is harder to make gripping than it sounds, and it works because the show trusts the tension of the wait. Tommy Wright's Riley is a quiet menace; he does not need to shout to be frightening. The neighbourhood around the flat does not know it is being watched, and that is the point of the exercise.

Terence Skelton's Donald Fraser and Tom Kempinski's Chris Field fill out the gang, while Michael Earl's Det. Sgt. Brown joins Evans, Snow, Nesbitt and Knowles in the patient business of not being seen. Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Gilchrist Calder directed, and the hour is built on looking, which is the oldest police skill of all. Cullen, played by Walter Gotell, keeps the pressure on from above, as he always does.

The best police work is boring until it is not. "Observation" understands that, and it lets the boredom build, trusting the viewer to know what a room full of armed men means. Hawkins' flat across the street is the best seat in the house, and the episode knows it. Nothing about the hour shouts, and everything about it watches. It is a patient hour for patient viewers.