I Want The Man

The episode turns on a deal Regan probably shouldn't have made. After a jewel theft, his informant Popeye is grabbed by a villain named Maynard while keeping an eye on Frankie Little, a small-time crook. Regan pulls Little in, and then offers him the oldest trade in the book: walk free, and drive for Maynard on the next job. Little takes it. Of course he takes it. He's the sort of crook who folds early, which is exactly why Regan picked him.

The plan is for Little to feed Regan the details of the robbery. But on the eve of the heist, all Regan gets is a phone call and two words: "Old Readies." It's a tip-off that means nothing until you know what it means. And the rest of the episode is Regan working it out against the clock, because Popeye's life is riding on it, along with the whole quiet arrangement of informants and favours the squad runs on.

Roy Kinnear is inspired casting as Frankie Little, a man out of his depth and aware of it. You watch him sweat through the whole episode, and Kinnear makes that funny and frightening at once. Michael Coles makes Maynard properly menacing, the kind of villain who doesn't shout because he doesn't need to. Russell Hunter plays Popeye with the right hunted edge. John Thaw, Dennis Waterman and Garfield Morgan are the regulars, with Elizabeth Cassidy as Sandy Little, Peter Halliday as Chief Insp. Gordon, Patsy Dermott as Christine and Henry Woolf as Jimmy Dancer. Ray Jenkins and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Tom Clegg directed.

The whole hour is a ticking clock, and the show knew how to make those sing. It's the rare Sweeney episode where the best scene is a man talking on the telephone. "Old Readies" is a shaggy-dog clue that lands exactly right.