Hadleigh: Time Out (ITV 7 May 1976, with Joanna Dunham)

In Time Out James (with Sutton in tow) is spending a few days staying at Charlie Caldwell’s new cottage in Cornwall, he is hope for some peace and quiet but quickly discovers that is not going to happen. First he has to rescue a teenage boy who has stumbled into a “smallish” mine shaft and is quite taken with his mother Nora Urquhart.

Nora is trying her cottage and the several acres surrounding it. There are mineral rights attached to the land but they are frozen and cannot be exploited. James becomes interested when he discovers that the Government has plans to begin unfreezing frozen rights. Eventually James discovers that he is being totalled played by Nora (despite becoming romantically involved with her) and that all she wants is to sell off the land for an exorbitant price.

Meanwhile Charlie Caldwell arrives to stay for a couple of days too. He is expected. However the fact that he has a fiancee in tow is very much a surprise. Charlie has fallen for much younger solicitor Elizabeth Paterson and James isn’t totally convinced she is right for him. Hadleigh gets intimate with Nora (Joanna Dunham) but he is being played by her over the sale of her cottage.

In an aside Charlie tells James that Jennifer is staying with him whilst she has the baby she is expecting and at the end of the episode we learn she has given birth to a boy.

James has looked rather more relaxed dress wise in several of the recent episodes, he is happy to go without a tie for much of the episode and even wears a pullover when he is fishing.

Joanna Dunham, who the following year would go on to play Mrs Van Der Valk in the ITV crime drama, plays Nora with Patricia Haines, who is fabulous at playing these type of characters, is Elizabeth. Gerald James steals the episode though, he is excellent in the scene where James tells Charlie a few home truths about Elizabeth – Charlie won’t listen to any of it though and eventually demands that James leaves! James effortlessly smart even in a pullover.

production details
UK / ITV – Yorkshire / 1×50 minute episode / Broadcast Friday 7 May 1976 at 9.00pm

Writer: Ian Curteis / Production Design: Richard Jarvis / Director: Christopher Hodson

Series: Hadleigh Season 4 Episode 10

cast
Gerald Harper as James Hadleigh
Peter Dennis as Sutton
Gerald James as Charlie Caldwell
Patricia Haines as Elizabeth Paterson
Joanna Dunham as Nora Urquhart
John Saunders as Simon Wigram
Geoffrey Chater as David Ringham
John Moore as Mr Smith
Joan Haythorne as Mrs Bragge
John Sanderson as Grubby Boy