You’ve been run over by a car. You somehow, mysteriously ended up in the ’70s, with no discernible means of getting back home. You don’t know whether you’re mad, in a coma or back in time. How could it possibly get worse?
One answer to that question would be this: you get a phone call. It’s your mum, telling you (from the future) that since the doctors are seeing negligible brain activity only, she’s decided to switch off life support, today, at 2 o’clock. Yup, that’d be enough to ruin anyone’s day, whether in the 1970s or in the 2000s. (If only Gregory House worked for the NHS – he’d certainly be able to tell the difference between ‘negligible brain activity’ and ‘stuck in the past, for god’s sake, get me outta here!’)
To make the situation more disturbing, Sam and the rest of the gang get called out to the Gazette newspaper, where a man’s taken hostages, saying that at 2pm someone’s going to die. Just when you thought the day had reached rock bottom.
Sam decides: No one’s going to die today. Not the hostages, not him. Taking the lead on the case, he tries reaching out to the hostage taker, though without success. He finds out who the culprit is, though: Reg Cole, a man obsessed with heroism and chivalry – when he isn’t taking hostages, that is.
I remember finding this episode riveting when I first watched the series. It had a deft blend of the two plot lines: Sam’s plight, knowing that his life support would be switched off at 2pm, and the hostage situation. It’s a good example, though, of the elements of the series that hold up less well when watched a second time. The humour’s still there, the bristly relationship between Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt, but an episode such as this one relies almost exclusively on the tension of the built-in deadline.
Still, there are bits and pieces all over the episode that are enjoyable the second time around. There are fun scenes with DCI Litton, Hunt’s nemesis; there’s the antagonism between the Gazette, a critical liberal newspaper, and reactionary dinosaur Gene. Cole is an interesting foil for the characters: not a simple bad guy but a cultured, deeply disaffected man, and the twist concerning his identity is surprisingly effective. The episode also brings up Sam’s dad, a clever way of leading up to the season finale.
What holds up best, in the end, is how the series relies less on the predictable bait-and-switch of the weaker episodes or on repetitive action sequences. The last twenty episodes, played mostly between Sam, Gene, Annie and Reg Cole, make use of the characters that go beyond the usual fun-but-clichéd interplay.
Although, talking of clichés: I guess the episode – and definitely myself – could have done without Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World” at the end. Now that’s a song that could do with a decade or so of rest.
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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. 
