Car chases accompanied by wakka-wakka guitar sound: does it get any more ’70s than that? All you need is Michael Douglas and Karl Malden on their gap year in Manchester, England – home of Manchester United (or “Man U”), so Lt. Stone and Inspector Keller could have learnt a thing or two about football. (I’m pretty sure Gene Hunt would have a thing or two to say about the kind of people who call the game “soccer”.)
Following the chase Gene and the gang are called to a crime scene. The victim: a Man U fan, an endangered species in those parts of the city that support Manchester City. Gene suspects the man was killed by City fans; Sam isn’t so sure, not least because the victim, Colin Clay, hasn’t been beaten up. Instead, he was killed by a tiny puncture wound at the base of his skull – not exactly the established M.O. for footie thugs.
As usual, Gene goes for what his guts tell him, in spite of there being no evidence whatsoever. Sam asks to be allowed to go undercover with the fans at the Man U-supporting pub, the Trafford Arms – and knowing a good idea when he hears one, Gene not only gives Sam the green light, he has the publican arrested on trumped up charges (hey, if it works, don’t knock it…) and takes his place for a few days. Obviously you can’t run a pub without a barmaid, so they’re joined by Annie – easily the most competent for the job of the three. Now there’s a surprise.
Down at the pub, things go relatively okay, if you ignore Gene having way more fun than he should on the job. Sam, in the meantime, makes contact with the locals. One of them, Malcolm Cox, seems less sad about Colin’s death than excited that they’ve got an excuse to march against City fans at the Saturday match. Cox, not the most levelheaded of football fans, even goes so far as to threaten Hunt in the course of the evening. Another United fan, Pete Bond, strikes Sam as far more calm and collected.
Sam’s own interest in the case goes beyond disagreeing with Gene; as his dad used to take him to the Saturday games, before Papa Tyler decided to up and leave the family, he projects his abandonment issues onto Colin’s son, Ryan. Sam lucks out, though; talking to Ryan he unearthes evidence that points towards everyone’s favourite psychotic footie fan, Malcolm Cox, who not only has several assault charges on his record, he’s also displayed a habit of threatening people with a key held between his knuckles. The homespun knuckle duster is perhaps not the most intimidating of weapons – but it serves perfectly to make small puncture wounds. Make one of those in the right place, et voilà. Or rather, Bob’s your uncle. There are still 20 minutes in the episode, so the Law of Narrative Timing suggests that it may not be as easy as nicking the man and throwing him in the locker.
Cox is arrested on suspicion of murder, the motive being that the Man U fan wanted to fabricate an excuse for the fans to start a fight against the City supporters. Cox breaks surprisingly easy (Hunt doesn’t even get to use his fists or his sarcasm), saying that the murder was an accident – and that he wasn’t the one who did it. Instead, it was level-headed Pete Bond – who at this moment is planning a big battle against the other team’s fans. The police go in where the fans meet for the bust-up, and Sam gets Bond, who tells him, “This is the buzz, man. This is what we do. It’s the game.” Sam replies, “You don’t know anything about football. People like you came along, and you took it away from us.” He adds, with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, “How long before something terrible happens and we are dragging bodies out?”
I’d be curious how well this episode, which was one of the favourites of the series’ run in the UK, works in a country that isn’t crazy about football. Arguably, England is the nation whose football fans have the worst reputation, and it saw a number of football-related crimes and deaths in the ’80s and ’90s. Whether the reputation is still warranted or not, hooliganism is a British trauma. Football fandom has lost its innocence, and this episode addresses the issue. It does so well, but as a result it is very much specific to the culture of football fandom in the United Kingdom. Do Sam’s disappointed words to Bond strike a note with audiences for whom football is a game where overly padded men run around carrying a weirdly shaped ball? I’d definitely be interested in hearing the opinions of US readers of The Best Shows You’re Not Watching.
However, this is also one of the few episodes of the series that is about something other than the Tyler/Hunt love-hate relationship and the whole “Aren’t the ’70s wacky?” spiel. Whether it travels well beyond the British Isles or not, it shows that the series wants to be about something, and that at its best it can be about something other than repeating the same tropes over and over. And it can provide an entertaining hour at the same time – which is already more than can be said for a number of series.
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Matt K. is a survivor of academia. He's fanatical about good TV and movies. He lives in Switzerland, which means that he gets his chosen drug mostly in the form of boxed DVD sets. You can read more of his musings on TV, life, movies, books and video games at http:\\goofybeast.wordpress.com. 
