Gold Plated Delinquents

Two rich, bored teenagers go looking for kicks and land Van der Valk with a burglary that turns out to be the least interesting part of the story. The crime is petty. The backgrounds behind it are not, and the detective gets a clear look at the well-upholstered lives that produced the culprits.

The episode's interest is in the parents as much as the children. A burglary pulls Van der Valk into a world of money and supervision so loose it amounts to neglect, and the more he digs, the less innocent the adults look. The teenagers are a symptom; the households are the disease, if you want to be unkind about it. Phoebe Nicholls's Treesje and Allan Hendrick's Rinus are the children in the frame, while Ian Hendry's Boersma and John Woodnutt's Dr. Roest represent the older order that prefers not to see what its comfort buys. Annabel Leventon's Hannie Wijsman and Lisa Daniely's Mrs. Visser fill out the suburban picture. The burglary, by the end, feels like the one honest act in the street.

What the hour does well is refuse to tut at the youngsters and leave it there. The boredom is real, but it was supplied, and the show knows the difference. Van der Valk, who has seen every variety of trouble the city can produce, treats this one with the same patience he would give a sharper crime, which is its own quiet comment on how much damage money can do without breaking any windows.

Roger Marshall and Nicolas Freeling wrote it, and Tom Clegg directed. Joanna Dunham is Arlette, with Nigel Stock as Samson, and Deborah Fallender's American Sister and Anthony Howden's Ari Anderson rounding the cast.

It's a small, slightly sour story, and the right one for a series that never much believed wealth bought anyone a pass. The kids will survive. The parents, one suspects, will not notice a thing.