Clever Dick

A flood of counterfeit Deutschmarks is circulating in Germany, and the source is on the British side of the water. The unit is set to establish the English connection, the point at which the forged notes enter the chain. Then a former colleague of Bulman's comes up from London to take the lead on the case, and Bulman has two reactions at once: annoyance at being pushed aside on his own patch, and curiosity about why the man has come. The curiosity is the better instinct, and the episode knows it. A detective of that reputation does not travel from Manchester to lead an ordinary forgery case without a reason.

The gang running the operation is violent and willing to kill. Discovery carries a risk of death rather than of exposure, and the episode's engine in the second half is Willis, who goes under cover as a boxer, the most physical of the unit's officers placed in the most physical of disguises, working a fighting man's world to get near men who print money. His cover is blown and he is exposed, which puts his life in danger and gives Dennis Blanch the largest amount of jeopardy the character has carried in the season to that point.

Two mysteries run at once: who is producing the notes, and why a London officer has come north to take over. The second is the better question and the episode runs the forgery on the surface and the reason for the arrival underneath. The theme with the strongest support in the material is professional territory. A detective sergeant has a case; a detective inspector arrives from London and takes it. The friction is not corruption and not incompetence, it is hierarchy, and it is treated as a fact of police life to be worked around rather than a scandal. That sits alongside Rainbow's frustration at the unit's methods as part of the same subject: who is in charge of the way a case is run.

Henderson is given something new, which is professional jealousy, and the episode lets him be petty before his curiosity recovers him, which is a more interesting arrangement than having him right from the start. Neil Stacy's Barrington has to be plausible enough as a hotshot that the resentment reads as resentment rather than as a plot device. Andrew Sachs and John Duttine carry the criminal side, and Duttine in particular was in the middle of a period of prominent television work.

The case itself is ordinary. Counterfeit currency, a violent gang and an exposed undercover officer could carry almost any police series of the period, and the mediagems guide's verdict that it is average is fair. What has not dated is the professional-territory plot: a senior officer from head office taking over a local investigation, and the person displaced by it having to decide whether to help. The season's regulars appear together here without either of its female leads, since it falls in the gap between Tomelty's departure and Mollison's arrival.