Old Dog with New Tricks

Charley Turkel wants his brother Henry out of prison, and his method is the sort of thing the old-school villains of this series would have called a proper job. He plans to take the Home Secretary hostage, which means the family needs Henry sprung from custody before the swap can happen. The whole scheme rests on a visit Henry is due to make to a police station for an award ceremony, where bogus officers are meant to snatch him.

CI5 get wind of the plan through a small-time hood arrested for robbing the Turkel armoury. What the Turkels never know is that the man standing in for the Home Secretary is George Cowley himself, working the sting with a bullet in his leg and Bodie at his side as bodyguard. Doyle waits on the other side of the operation, ready to act if the scheme turns violent. There is something quietly pleasing about a wounded Cowley volunteering to be the bait. He has no business being there, and he goes anyway, because that is what the job means to him.

Brian Clemens wrote it and Sidney Hayers directed. Johnny Shannon gives Charley Turkel the right amount of menace, with Stephan Chase as Dapper, Phil Davis as Billy Turner, Richard Hampton as Morgan, Pamela Stephenson as Nurse Emma Bolding, Anthony Morton as Henry and John Judd as a police inspector. Stephenson, a couple of years away from Not the Nine O'Clock News, is a cheerful bit of casting among all the leather and menace.

The sting works precisely because the Turkels never know who they are really holding. By the time the truth dawns on them, the trap has already closed. It is a small, neat episode, and this show always did small and neat very well. It may lack the budget of the big stunt outings. What it has instead is the confidence to let a disguise do the work of a car chase.