Tomorrow Man

Regan's world runs on car keys, informants and the occasional shove up a staircase. Tony Grey's world runs on computers, which in 1976 still counted as magic to most of the public. The two worlds collide over a consignment of gold bullion belonging to Dennis Longfield. Grey wants revenge on Longfield, and he means to take the gold with a little computer trickery and no gun at all.

Regan is out of his depth and knows it. He cannot talk to the machinery or bully it into behaving, and Grey has counted on exactly that. He is not stupid about it. He simply treats the computer as one more villain, something to be watched, cornered and, if possible, leaned on. The fun is in watching the old methods grind the new ones down. Regan has nothing but shoe leather and suspicion, plus a stubborn refusal to believe the machine holds all the answers.

The casting does half the work. John Hurt plays Tony Grey with the silky menace he always seemed to keep in a suit pocket, and George Cole's Dennis Longfield is the smug, aggrieved businessman you enjoy watching get rattled. Peter Bayliss, Ann Curthoys, Nina Thomas, Lawrence James and Keith Ashton fill the margins, while Garfield Morgan's Haskins hovers and grumbles in the background.

Andrew Wilson and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, and David Wickes directs with his usual briskness. Thaw and Waterman are on home ground throughout, Carter doing the legwork while Regan does the thinking, or the other way round, which is the partnership's whole trick.

There is a quiet joke at the centre: the man of tomorrow loses to a technophobe who trusts his feet. The show plays it straight, and that is the right call; an episode that winked at the audience would have spoiled the joke. And the moral, if there is one, is as old as the job: the machines change, but somebody still has to go and knock on the door.