Weekend in the Country

A quiet weekend in the country: that is all Bodie and Doyle want, and their girlfriends have been promised it. What they get instead is a farmhouse siege. A robbery has gone wrong nearby, and a wounded gunman called Albert Case and two of his gang fall into the farmhouse where the lads are staying, taking everyone inside hostage. That includes the girlfriends and one girl's family, which makes escape a lot harder than it would be if it were just the two of them.

The siege is the whole episode, and it is the kind of contained thriller the show does well: one room, several desperate men, and two professionals who have to keep their heads down and wait for their moment. Their moment eventually comes courtesy of Cowley, whose habitual impatience with the pair's elusiveness turns out to be exactly what breaks the stand-off. Even off duty, they cannot get away from him. Cowley's sheer refusal to wait for the pair to report in does more than any gun could.

Brian Clemens and Gerry O'Hara wrote it, James Allen and William Brayne directed. Bryan Pringle is Case, and he gives the wounded gang leader the right mix of pain and panic. Sarah Lawson is Mrs. Shaw, Brian Croucher is Georgie, Louisa Rix is Judy Shaw, Ray Burdis is Vince, Jacqueline Reddin is Liz and Marcus D'Amico is Daniel.

The pleasure is in the squeeze. Stripped of their usual gear and backup, the boys have to improvise, and seeing them out of their element is a genuine change of pace for a show that usually lets them arrive with the cavalry. The hostages around them raise the cost of every move they make, and the episode is patient enough to let the tension build slowly.

A tidy, tense hour that proves the series did not need a conspiracy to make a good episode.