Round the Clock

Two men in a car, watching a building, disagreeing about whether the man they are hunting is even alive. That is Round the Clock in one line. Tom Haggerty, newly arrived in the Branch, is convinced Craven is chasing a suspect who is already dead. Craven, who blames his new colleague for a run of bitter setbacks in his career and his private life, is not interested in the theory. For Craven the case is personal in ways the paperwork does not show. The stakeout is their battleground, chosen by nobody and unavoidable by both.

Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley wrote it and Douglas Camfield directed, and the episode does something the series is good at: it makes the stakeout a pressure cooker. Hours in a car with two men who would rather be anywhere else, watching a case that keeps not happening. Around them the usual support network turns over: Detective Sergeant Bill North, Chief Superintendent Knight, Pam Sloane, Frank, appearing around the edges the way people do on a long shift. The title promises a long shift, and the episode delivers one.

And the friction is the point. Haggerty has the facts, or thinks he does. Craven is running on instinct and resentment, and neither man is giving ground. Both are sure of themselves, which is the problem, and the hours stretch out accordingly.

George Sewell's Craven and Patrick Mower's Haggerty anchor it, with Roger Rowland as Bill North, Richard Leech as Chief Supt. Knight, Sheila Scott Wilkinson as Pam Sloane and Patrick Fyffe as Frank.

A quiet, tense hour about two men who cannot agree on the most basic fact of the job. Whether the suspect is dead is almost beside the point. And the episode does something quietly clever: it makes you take sides, then makes you wonder why. Haggerty's first outing with his new guv'nor is a test, and both of them know it.