Assault

It begins with a family matter, which is the worst possible way for Haggerty to start a week. His father is beaten into a coma in the latest of a series of attacks on travellers, and the job is personal before it is official. At first the case sits outside Special Branch's jurisdiction, which suits nobody. Then the next victim turns out to have been carrying sensitive government documents, and the whole affair lands squarely in the unit's lap.

Craven and Haggerty go after the men responsible, a crew the file politely calls vicious muggers. But the stolen papers change the shape of the hunt. The men who took them have no idea what they are holding, and a straightforward beating case becomes a race to get the documents back before they vanish into the wrong hands. Pam Sloane hovers at the edges, Bernard Phillips drifts through the middle of it, and Commander Nicholls watches the operation from above, ready to want results without getting close enough to be blamed for them.

Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley wrote it, Douglas Camfield directed. Camfield, better known for Doctor Who, stages the manhunt with the clean, purposeful economy he brought to a Dalek invasion. George Sewell's Craven and Patrick Mower's Haggerty share the running, with Roger Rowland's Bill North in support. Bob Keegan is Mr. Haggerty Snr., Richard Vernon plays Townsend, John Plume is Bernard Phillips, Maria O'Brien is Helen, and George Moon runs the shop as the Proprietor.

The episode works because the injury is never just a plot device. Haggerty has to do the job with his father lying in a hospital bed, and the script keeps returning to the man in that bed so the strain shows in the small ways Mower lets the mask slip. For a unit that usually deals in defectors and dead drops, a father in a coma is about as close to home as this show ever gets. It is not the subtlest hour Special Branch made, but it may be one of its most human.