Night Out

It starts on a Saturday afternoon, which tells you something about the sort of case this is going to be. A bank robbery is in progress, and the squad's job is to find the radio transmitter the raiders are using to coordinate. While that hunt goes on, the Superintendent decides Regan should call on an old girlfriend. Her flat sits right next door to the bank.

That is the conceit of the episode, and it is a good one. Regan is sent off on what amounts to a social errand while the rest of the Flying Squad works the streets around the bank, and the two halves of the story run side by side without tripping over each other. The writing credits go to Troy Kennedy Martin and Ian Kennedy Martin, brothers, and you can feel the pair of them enjoying the structure: half a procedural about signal-hunting, half a quiet personal story about a man who is never quite off duty.

The squad side is brisk. Carter, Haskins, Jellineck and Jim work the leads, Det. Supt. Grant hovers at the edges of the operation, and the pace is very much the pace the show liked best, fast and a little rough. The supporting cast adds flavour, with Christopher Beeny's photographer and Derrick O'Connor's Eagle drifting through the background like faces you half recognise from a dozen other episodes.

But it is the Regan side that stays with you. John Thaw plays the visit with that blend of charm and wariness he did so well, and Mitzi Rogers's Iris is a proper presence rather than a plot device with a teapot. David Wickes directs, and the whole hour feels like the series finding its feet: the violence kept light and the tone confident, the running time gone before you notice.

Nothing here changes the shape of the world. It is a mid-season episode that does exactly what it is meant to do, which is remind you that police work is people work, and that even a bank job can come down to one man knocking on an old friend's door.