The Placer

Regan spends this one under a false name, and the change suits him. He goes in as an ex-con looking for driving work and talks his way into a job on the lorries so he can get close to a ring of hijackers. It is the oldest trick in the undercover book, and the show knows it, which is why it works. But the interest is in how long he can keep the plates spinning: the fake background, the easy mateship, right up to the moment when someone asks the wrong question.

You always believe Thaw, and that is what carries it. Regan the lorry driver has the same short temper and the same quick grin as Regan the copper; he just points them somewhere else. The script, by Trevor Preston with Ian Kennedy Martin, gives him room to live the part long enough for the job to stop being a job. Ted Childs directs, and there is a real patience to the storytelling that the faster episodes don't always have.

The tension comes from watching him sit in the cab with men who would bury him if they knew, trading talk about loads and money. He is there to gather evidence, but he is also there to be tested, and the testing is done quietly: a sly question here, a knowing look there.

Around him the usual Sweeney faces do their bit. Carter works the outside of the job, Haskins keeps the pressure on from above, and the supporting cast is good value. Stanley Meadows brings a rumpled authority to Harry Poole, John Forgeham and Tony Steedman fill out the ring as Dennis Rawlins and Andrew Barkis, and Susan Tracy's Fran and Marjie Lawrence's Mrs. Harris give the episode its softer edges. It is the kind of hour where the faces matter more than the plot mechanics, and the faces are well chosen.

The payoff, when it comes, is quick and hard, as these things tended to be. That is the whole trick of the piece, really: patience on the way in, violence on the way out.