2-09. Death of a Friend.

A friend of Callan's meets a sudden end.

Air Date: Mar. 5, 1969. Written by: Ray Jenkins. Directed by: Peter Duguid. Produced by: Reginald Collin.


THE PLOT:

Callan is shocked to learn that an old friend, French agent Jean Coquet (Geoff Cheshire), has died in an apparent car crash in England. Coquet's "accident" was not so simple, however. Hunter reveals that Coquet had been "doped," causing him to fall asleep at the wheel. Meres is following up with workers on the ferry Coquet took into the country. But he ends up coshed over the head, waking up hours later to find the ferry departed.

Hunter sends Callan to watch after Coquet's widow, Francine (Ann Lynn), leaving Lonely to watch Callan's flat. Not long after, a man enters the apartment and holds Lonely at gunpoint, insisting that he needs to talk to Callan. This is Marcel Latour (David Leland), a low-level worker at the French Ministry of Defense... who introduces himself as Coquet's "wife."

Lonely thinks Callan's flat is being watched. 
Turns out, he's right.

CHARACTERS:

Callan: Dislikes Francine, and when he learns that she and Coquet had been separated, he is inclined to blame her. He is surprised when Francine reveals that Coquet had a "photograph of a man" in his new home, rather than one of her, but he takes it in stride.  When he finally does connect with Latour, he is nothing but compassionate in his interactions with him - significantly more compassionate than he is with Francine.

Hunter: Immediately realizes something is off about Coquet's car crash. We first see him tracing routes from the ferry dock to multiple destinations, and he later explains to Callan that the site of the crash only made sense if Coquet was headed to London - which was not the city hosting the conference he was supposedly attending. He is wary of Flomard (Jerome Willis), the French intelligence contact working with him on the case, particularly after details Flomard shares don't line up with Francine's claims.

Lonely: Not for the first time, his loyalty to Callan breaks through his instinct for self-preservation. After Latour pulls his gun and insists he will wait in Callan's flat for him to return, Lonely hops to the door and locks it - ensuring that Callan won't simply walk into an ambush. Russell Hunter gives a quite funny nonverbal moment of self-congratulation before shrinking back into Lonely's accustomed obsequious manner.

Meres: When Hunter orders Meres to pick up Latour, Meres disarms the Frenchman effortlessly.  He then takes glee in sneering sadistically at him. Latour declares him "evil," but later puts himself in jeopardy to rescue Meres from a sudden attack. Meres is left bewildered as to why the man saved his life when he "wasn't very nice to him." Callan calls him out for "remorse at nine o'clock in the morning," and Meres snorts derisively in response - but it's clear that he does regret his behavior, and that he's as uncomfortable with that feeling as he is unfamiliar with it.

Meres is "not very nice" to Marcel Latour.

THOUGHTS:

Death of a Friend is an oasis in a desert of missing episodes, being the the sole existing installment between Heir Apparent and Season Two's final three installments (and even one of those had to be recreated from an unedited studio recording session). I have no idea why this episode survived when those around it fell. Still, I'm glad of it. It's not the series at its very best, with some spotty plotting marring a strong pace and good character bits, but it's still highly enjoyable.

Death of a Friend is tightly paced, moving rapidly from Meres' questioning of the ferry workers to Callan's questioning of Francine to the unexpected visitor at Callan's flat. There are strong character moments spread amongst the regulars and the main guest cast, with both Francine and Latour emerging as complex characters despite relatively brief screen time.

Unfortunately, plot issues keep this from being the great episode it might have been. Details surrounding Coquet's death are muddy. We first see him driving at high speeds, so he was drugged without realizing it. We learn that he was being careful during the crossing and thought someone was following him, so he would have been unlikely to accept food or drink from anyone. So he was evidently drugged by The Plot Fairy, sacrificed so that the story could happen.

Much is made of Hunter's suspicions about Flomard, his French counterpart. Save for a namecheck, however, Flomard is entirely absent from the story's resolution, leaving his entire role feeling like padding disguised as intrigue. That's not even mentioning the coincidences needed for the story to unfold, or that both Callan and Meres get knocked unconscious in the same episode, and in both cases are left alive for no particular reason.

All of that makes the episode sound sloppier than it plays. I honestly only thought of a couple of those issues while watching, and was mostly caught up in the fast pace and the great character moments. Director Howard Hawks once defined a great movie as one with three good scenes and no bad ones. Death of a Friend easily meets that definition... though the plot issues leave me ranking it as merely good, rather than great.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

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