Fool's Mate

Britain's top code and cypher breaker has to sit across a chessboard from Communist players at a tournament, and somebody has to go along and watch him do it. Inman draws the duty. Moxon, meanwhile, is running a game of his own, and the pawn in it is Jordan. The tournament is the cover and the trap at once. The code breaker is the prize and the bait, and Inman is there to see which he turns out to be.

George Markstein wrote it and Dennis Vance directed, and the episode enjoys the chess business without needing to explain it. The code breaker is the man who reads the enemy's messages, and here he is making conversation with the enemy over a board. Around him move Christine Morris, Miss Tully, Erich Erhardt, the Deputy Commander, Christopher Haddon and Detective Sergeant Cutler, with a number one interrogator waiting in the wings for when the game turns. The atmosphere is all politeness and calculation, which suits the subject. Every move around the board is loaded, and the episode never has to raise its voice.

And Moxon's scheme is the engine. Jordan is a pawn who does not know he is on the board, and the title tells you exactly how the story treats him. The chess framing is not decoration; the show means it, move for move.

Derren Nesbitt's Jordan and Fulton Mackay's Inman anchor it, with Morris Perry as Moxon, Sandra Bryant as Christine Morris, Ingrid Hafner as Miss Tully, David Garth as the Deputy Commander, Simon Lack as Christopher Haddon, Jack Carr as Det. Sgt. Cutler, Geoffrey Russell as Erich Erhardt and Paul Starr as the No. 1 Interrogator.

The combination of quiet rooms and sudden moves suits the show well. In espionage as in chess, the first capture is usually a pawn. It is one of the more elegant outings of the era, all calculation and no noise.