Print of Death

There is a wages snatch by someone dressed up as a policeman. It leaves two people shot dead. Some days later a director of a factory is shot dead in his car and money stolen from the case he had.

Fingerprint evidence points to an armed robber called Joseph Shelton. He has just been released from Dartmoor prison and seems to back to his old tricks again.

Only no one has seen Shelton. Docks and airports are on the lookout for Shelton but it seems he managed to do a robbery in Tangiers as well.

Superintendent Reynolds helped by a visiting American policeman called Kovacs have a hunch after a corpse is found with his head and hands removed. What if Shelton is dead and someone is planting his fingerprint at these robberies.

A rather sinister and macabre instalment of Scotland Yard. It goes at a brisk pace. There is a chase scene across the bombed out houses leading to a train yard which is very much of its era.

Superintendent Reynolds is called in to deal with a wages heist, where two Policemen were left for dead and £50k stolen, Reynolds is joined by American Detective Kovacs. Prime suspect is Joseph Shelton, newly released from Dartmoor, only he's missing.

Very good short, this one is very dry, pretty bleak, very much of its time and definitely devoid of humour. Just imagine high volumes of cash being driven around, it seems almost unthinkable these days, the drivers were at such risk.

What a clever storyline, fingerprints being used in such an imaginative way at a time where people weren't so aware of DNA, I thought that twist was very clever.

There's a pretty exciting ending too, a good old fashioned game of cops and robbers.

It looks great, especially that shot of Dartmoor, compare that to how it looks now. Scenes on the tracks at the end also looked top notch.

Phil Brown was rather good as Kovacs, was his character there to appeal to American audiences perhaps, I don't even know if this show was shown stateside? I did enjoy the performance of Roberta Huby, who played Annie.

8/10.