Feedback

A van belonging to Wheels on Meals is stolen, and it is driven straight at the house of Mr Fordham, the reclusive father of Councillor Fordham. The attack is ugly. One of the robbers is a girl, and she beats the old man badly before taking his safe. But the episode's oddest detail comes before the getaway: Old Fordham gets in a grope of his attacker, which is not what the robbers budgeted for. The assault is real and unpleasant; the detail is something else entirely.

The investigation draws in the whole squad. Watt and Hawkins lead, Evans and Dodds work the ground, Perry, Lincoln and WPC Arthur fill the uniforms, and Cullen keeps his distance from the mess. Roland Culver, one of the most familiar faces in British cinema, plays the old man with a crusty determination that makes the strange scene almost plausible. Bernard Lloyd's Councillor Fordham hovers nearby, embarrassed by his father and the whole affair.

The robbery itself is straightforward, and the episode knows it. The interest is in what the case does to the people around it: a councillor whose father will not behave, a victim who refuses to act like one, and a squad that has to file a report on an incident that reads like a joke and happened like a crime. It is the sort of case that would read like a comedy sketch if it did not hurt so much.

Elwyn Jones wrote it and Herbert Wise directed, and the episode has a slightly farcical streak underneath the violence. The tone wobbles between thriller and black comedy, and mostly it lands.

There is something nearly comic about the old man's retaliation, and the episode is honest enough not to pretend otherwise. It is the sort of detail that stays with you, and the squad treats it as just another fact of the job. Feedback, one assumes, is not what any of them expected to be giving.