Nine Tenths of the Law

A young girl, June, is taken by her father after leaving school. Mary Phillips, June's mother, asks
Eddie to get her daughter back. She has divorced Dennis, the girl's father.

Eddie puts out a radio request describing the missing girl, much to Radio West's legal adviser's
opposition. The landlady of the flat where June and Dennis are staying phones the station and Eddie
comes to the flat, to find that the father and daughter have left in a blue 2CV.

Visiting an old friend of Dennis', Eddie is told that he had a girlfriend, Joanna Lomas, who works in a
library. Before meeting Joanna, Eddie is chased through a forest, and threatened by Mary Phillips'
father Tom, an overbearing security guard who tells him that they will work together to find the
missing girl.

Eddie escapes and, posing as a representative of a literary organisation, asks Joanna Lomas if she
knows where Dennis Phillips is. The girl denies knowing and Eddie asks her why she lent Dennis her
Citroen 2CV. Joanna denies this too and tells Eddie that it has been stolen.

Erica checks police records and tells Eddie that the car was only reported missing to the police after he
visited her. Following Joanna in the car, Eddie finds that Dennis and June are hiding in an abandoned
hut. June hits Eddie on the head with a flowerpot and they take his car. Dennis has struck a deal with
the captain of a freight ship - he will take them with him when he leaves port.

A Radio West listener phones the station - lured by the promise of three LPs - and tells Eddie where his
car is. It has been left by the docks, and Eddie finds Dennis and June on board the ship. Mary is an
alcoholic, and the girl wants to be with her father. Before the ship can leave, Tom grabs the girl and takes
her back to her mother, whom the courts have legally placed her with.

Don congratulates Eddie on another successful case, offering him a drink. Eddie declines, for he has little
to celebrate.

A thoughtful episode, in which Eddie sides with the
"kidnapper" of the girl he is looking for. Marek
Kanievska presents his customary arresting imagery -
we are presented with a long, slow tracking shot
closing in on the gates of the school at the beginning of
the episode, and the close up of Tom's black glasses
as he takes the girl at the end hints ominously at the
unhappy future she has ahead with her mother. It's
impossible to comment on this episode without
mentioning Harry H. Corbett's fine performance as the
overbearing Tom. There's a fine comic interlude where a
bedraggled Eddie arrives late for one of Erica's dinner
parties.

In production order, the first of four episodes to be directed by future feature director Marek
Kanievska, whose work for Shoestring is exemplary, always lending the 'thriller' elements of the
programme a tangible air of quiet menace.

Eddie has his first brush with a Radio West lawyer in this episode (Alan Bridgeman). He is always
unimpressed with any interference in his investigations -- he is after all trying to help! -- and usually
gives them short shrift.

Something of a pyrrhic victory for Eddie here: it
turns out of course that June Phillips would prefer to
stay with her father, who had 'snatched' her at the
beginning of the episode - but she can't. Mary
Phillips, the mother who hired Eddie, is a lush, and
her father Tom (nice to see a post-Steptoe Harry H
Corbett) is hardly the most pleasant grandfather in
the world!

This is a very typical Shoestring episode I think. A
thriller certainly, but we also get a good glimpse into
the very believable guest characters' lives, leading to
an uncertain ending.