Tough, Mrs. Rudge

Not every case Maggie Forbes handles involves a body. 'Tough, Mrs. Rudge' is about a gang of teenagers making life hell for the pensioners on their own estate, and about the difficulty of getting the law to take it seriously. The kids know exactly how far they can push, and the old people know they have no witnesses willing to talk. The estate is its own world, and the episode does not pretend a copper from the centre automatically understands it.

Kathleen St. John plays Mrs Rudge, and the title is a compliment. She is the one who refuses to be beaten, and the episode builds itself around her stubbornness as much as Maggie's investigation. The pensioners' scenes have a warmth that stops the story from turning into a misery memoir. Amanda York's Lorna Bains and Lowri Ann Richards's Ginger Dawson suggest the gang has a female half, which the script uses to complicate easy answers about who the troublemakers are. James Bate's Dr Santana and Ann Curthoys's Miss Hubble fill out the community around them.

Anthony Couch and Terence Feely wrote it, Nic Phillips directed, and it went out on 17 December 1982, a week before Christmas, which makes the subject matter land even harder. Maggie's approach here is the one the series was named for: patient rather than flashy, and firm. She treats the pensioners as people rather than evidence, and the episode respects the small rituals of their lives. The squad's frustration is real too; teenage intimidation is one of the hardest crimes to evidence.

Bernard Holley's Mike Turnbull and the usual squad are around to help. But this is a story about a community holding its nerve. It is a quiet episode with a loud point: the fear of an old person in their own home is not a minor crime just because the victim is easy to ignore. That Maggie wins the trust of people who have stopped trusting is the real investigation.