Right and Wrong

DS Singer is convinced a local councillor is taking bribes, and his conviction has run ahead of his evidence. His enquiries so far have produced nothing. That is the situation the episode opens with, and it is why the case is handed to Bulman's unit at all.

The operation is placed close to the target. Singer assigns Willis and Doran to pose as newly married and move into the house opposite the politician's. Being neighbours rather than investigators gives them access to the household's ordinary life, which is the only way to reach evidence that direct enquiries could not. The councillor, Roy Stephens, is suspected of receiving money in return for initiating controversial education practices, so the bribes are not for commercial advantage but for a policy outcome: someone wants particular measures adopted and is paying a councillor to bring them about. The title sits directly on that question of what a councillor is entitled to do with his influence, because the offence in it is the sale of a public decision.

The strain falls on Doran. She has doubts early about whether she is working with the right people, and the pairing with Willis, which requires them to sustain a marriage for the sake of the operation while she is unsure of the operation itself, becomes a source of friction between them. That is the most substantial character development any of the regulars receives in Series 1, and it is the earliest indication that her position in the unit is not settled, which is what makes her replacement at Series 2 a development the series had begun to prepare.

David Daker plays Stephens as a real public figure rather than a villain, and the value of that is in making the corruption ordinary. Anne Reid gives the household a credible centre and makes the cover believable, which is what the operation depends on. John Ronane's Singer is at the centre of the structure rather than in support, the officer whose belief got ahead of the evidence, and it is the closest he comes in the first series to driving a case. David Hargreaves appears as Rainbow, keeping local command in an episode that is not Bulman's.

The episode has the weakest case of the seven and the strongest character writing. Singer's suspicion has produced no results and the story turns on whether the councillor's conduct can be shown, so a viewer who wants a decisive result gets a judgement rather than an arrest. The outcome of the operation is not stated in any listing consulted, and is not asserted here. What it does have is the clearest evidence that Series 1 was an ensemble drama with a rotating focus rather than a Bulman vehicle from the start: Bulman is absent, and the hour runs on Willis, Doran, Singer and Rainbow. It is also the most sombre of the first series apart from Briscoe, and one of the group the 1980s repeats skipped.