Killer with a Long Arm

Somewhere in Athens a hitman called Georgi is handed a rifle with a range of over two miles and a job that needs doing in London. The trip starts badly. He kills a traffic cop who pulls him over for speeding, which is the first anyone knows that a very dangerous man is in the country. Doyle and Bodie pick up the trail through a contact in the Greek community, and what they find is a political group holding a family hostage in a high-rise flat while Georgi practises with his weapon.

The target is a royal visitor due at the Wimbledon tennis competition, and the episode makes good use of the countdown. There is a particular chill in the idea of a marksman so far away that the people around the royal box would hear nothing and see nothing coming. The family held in that flat are the human cost of the plan, and the show keeps coming back to them, which is more than this kind of thriller usually bothers to do. The tennis crowd goes about its afternoon in the sunshine, oblivious to the arithmetic being done in a tower block a couple of miles away.

Brian Clemens wrote it and David Wickes directed. Michael Latimer plays Georgi as a professional who does not much enjoy the work, which is far more interesting than a gloating villain. Diane Keen is Hilda, with Milos Kirek as Costa, Alan Tilvern as Tarkos, Jonathan Hyde as Tommy, Bridget Brice as Betty and Antony Carrick as Mervin, while Gordon Jackson's Cowley keeps the whole operation on a short leash from headquarters.

It is a simple story, really. Find the rifle, find the gunman, work out who he is pointing it at. The series never needed more than that, and the two-mile shot gives it one of its best images: the assassin as a distant speck with the whole of Wimbledon in his sights.