Exit a Diplomat

Shoplifting is a small crime, and most of the time it stays that way. Not when the shoplifter belongs to a foreign embassy and tries to hide her status by accepting arrest with suspicious good grace. Mira Kobylnova would rather spend a night in a London police cell than admit who she works for, and that decision is what puts Det. Supt. Inman on the scent. Nobody expects a till-snatch to start an international incident, but Inman treats it as if it might.

But Inman is not interested in the stolen goods. He is interested in her employers, and the case grows from a till-snatch into the tangled business of diplomatic privilege: Jan Kobylna, Bilak, Dr. Cisar, a colonel, a chain of people with reasons to be careful. Jordan and Morrissey help Inman pull at the threads, and the episode takes its time showing how much of espionage is really paperwork with sharper elbows. Every question has to be asked twice, once for the answer and once for the embassy's version. Diplomatic immunity is the perfect crime, and the embassy knows it.

Scott Forbes wrote it, Voytek directed. Derren Nesbitt is Det. Chief Insp. Jordan, Fulton Mackay Det. Supt. Inman, with Morris Perry's Charles Moxon and Keith Washington's Det. Con. Morrissey. Barbara Leigh-Hunt plays Mira Kobylnova, George Pravda Jan Kobylna, Gary Watson Bilak, Hamilton Dyce Dr. Cisar, Anthony Baird the Police Sergeant and Donald Bisset the Colonel.

'Exit a Diplomat' gets a lot of mileage out of a very small crime. The shoplifting is barely the point. The point is the wall of diplomatic privilege that goes up the moment you touch one of their people, and the satisfaction of watching Inman find the gap in it. The exit in the title may not be the one the embassy planned.