Tapdancer

A mother's cry for help sends Ho looking for a missing boy, and the boy is not an ordinary child: with his tap shoes and a cassette player, Tommy Mancey is the most memorable case subject of the entire run. This is the episode the series is best remembered by, and the one with the highest rating in the database.

Marc Gilbey plays Tommy, with Ben Howard as his father Dave and Linda Marlowe as his mother Greta, whose plea opens the hour. Bryan Marshall plays George Bourne and Pam St Clement Aunt Daisy. Edward Hardwicke, an actor with a page on this site, plays Detective Chief Inspector Lowell, a senior officer from outside Ho's own station, and Ron Emslie returns as Detective Sergeant George Whatley after appearing in Oblomov.

The premise works because of what it leaves unsaid. A missing child is the simplest story the format can carry, and two objects, a pair of shoes and a cassette player, are enough to make the case specific rather than generic. A child defined by what he carries rather than by a description is a better piece of character writing than the run's usual adult suspects, and the show's decision to give Tommy an ordinary family around him is what keeps it from becoming a stunt.

Edward Hardwicke's guest role is the episode's other distinction. A senior officer from another force, arriving to look over a case Ho is running, is a variation on the Berwick relationship rather than a repeat of it, and Hardwicke uses it to create pressure without villainy. The run rarely had a guest player of his standing, and the part is the reason the episode's station scenes have something to do.

Ian Toynton directed, as he directed the opening episodes of both series and four episodes in all. Terence Williams produced, Ian Kennedy Martin wrote, Harry South's theme and Bill Wright's editing are in place. There is nothing in the production record to explain the episode's standing, which is a point worth making plainly: it is the best-supported hour in the run on a figure of seven votes, and the run's whole ratings base is fourteen numbers each under ten.

Yip's Ho is at his most humane here. The series' premise had always been that he is trusted by neither community, and a case that begins with a mother asking for help rather than with a complaint puts him on the side of the person in front of him. That is the manner the show's quieter episodes were aiming for, and this is the one where it lands.

No source records where Tommy has gone, what the shoes and the cassette player turn out to mean, or how the search ends. As with every episode of this run, the outcome is unrecorded and is not reconstructed here.

What is left is enough to recommend: a 1982 BBC hour with the simplest and strongest premise in the series, a missing child with two objects as clues, and a guest cast that gives the family and the station equal weight. It is the second series' best entry point and the reason the run is still watched at all.