Private Views

'Private Views' runs two stories side by side and trusts you to hold both. At work, Maggie is questioning an informant who knows things about a gang of thieves, the sort of low-level source who can crack a racket wide open if handled properly. At home, Steve is worried about a friend who has quit the police college, and the worry is doing something to him. Steve's friend has made a decision, and the finality of it is what unsettles him.

The title covers both halves. There is the private view of the informant, who sees what happens on the street and has learned to keep his mouth shut, and there is the private view of a young man watching a mate throw away the future he is building for himself. It is the kind of worry that cannot be fixed with advice, which is the point. Nigel Rathbone's Steve carries that second story well; the show has always used him to measure the cost of police life on the people around it.

Tony Parker and Terence Feely wrote it, John Davies directed, and it went out on 7 January 1983. Mark Botham's Neil Finch, Sharon Morgan's Carrie Harrison, Tricia George's Barbara Rees-Ogilvy and Gary Dean's Ginger Roberts fill out the case, with David Rolfe doing a turn as a man in a pub, which is a job description and a half. The gang itself stays mostly in the background, which is the right call; the episode is about the people on the edges of the crime.

The two strands never quite meet, and the episode is fine with that. And Maggie solves her problem and goes home to a different one, which is the standard rhythm of her life. The informant gets his moment, Steve gets his worry, and the credits roll on both. Some weeks the show saves its best material for the family scenes, and this is one of them. The case is handled, the worry is not, and the episode leaves it there.