One of Those Days

There is a type of episode where nothing goes wrong and nothing is easy, and this is one. Maggie Forbes spends the hour dealing with a drunken bank robber, and the comedy of the title is earned the hard way: the man has robbed a bank, and he is in no fit state to explain how or why, let alone where the money went. The robbery itself is no joke; the aftermath is, which is the show's way of saying that policing is mostly improvisation with the paperwork added.

The episode is a test of patience disguised as an investigation. Maggie has to coax a coherent story out of someone who can barely stand, while Russell, Fenton, Croft and Barratt work the edges of the case around her. The tone is lighter than the surrounding run, and the show leans into it: a robbery that keeps producing laughs the robbers didn't intend, and a detective who has had quite enough of the day by the time the cells are locked. Tony Doyle and David Kelly pop up as Doyle and Dooley, names that sound like they were chosen for the cast list alone, and Liz Smith's Edna Slater and Pamela Buchner's Mrs Russell drift through the edges of the story.

William Marlowe and Terence Feely wrote it, Nic Phillips directed. Jill Gascoine is Maggie Forbes, with Marlowe's Russell, Derek Thompson's Fenton, Brian Gwaspari's Croft and Paul Moriarty's Barratt. Nigel Rathbone plays Steve Forbes, Tony Doyle is Doyle, David Kelly plays Dooley, Liz Smith is Edna Slater and Pamela Buchner plays Mrs Russell.

It's a quiet hour that knows exactly what it is: a chance to watch a good detective be professional at a very bad time. And that's a pleasure on its own terms, even without a villain worth the name. There's no big twist, and the episode doesn't want one.