Ken Hughes, who had scored highly with audiences with his previous thriller serial, Solo For Canary, returned to BBC Television for the highly-topical An Enemy Of The State, a delightfully entertaining vehicle for Charles "Bud" Tingwell, one of the more notable fixtures from Emergency Ward Ten. As the launching point for a new season of thrillers under the production stewardship of Alan Bromly, this outing was directed with customary aplomb by James Cellan Jones and concerned a simple enough premise: the installation of a complex new British computer at a factory in Moscow.



Harry Sutton (Charles Tingwell), owner of a once internationally successful computer manufacturing factory, has fallen on hard times, and his longer working hours and desperation to keep his head above water has placed considerable strain on his relationship with his wife, Jennifer (Veronica Strong). His creditors are closing in, the most notable of which is his stockbroker, who is demanding repayment of a three-thousand-pound debt immediately. Unable to make ends meet, his salvation comes in an unexpected commission to install a computer in Moscow for a leading factory outlet there. However, before he departs for the Continent, he is approached by the mysterious Mr Henderson (Robert Mill), who claims to be a civil servant but has far more sinister motives than merely playing politics.



He asks Sutton to keep his eyes open and his ears close to the ground, as he is particularly keen to obtain certain documents from behind the Iron Curtain, and feels that Sutton's installation contract could prove to be the perfect cover for this operation. Offering to settle his debt with the stockbroker, he eventually convinces Sutton to accept his offer. However, what starts as a relatively simple installation in Moscow (and an equally simple procurement of the document - in the form of a tape - Mr Henderson requires) soon turns into a nightmarish sequence of events for Sutton, who becomes implicated in murder and, without any assistance from the civil servant, becomes a target of the Security Services in Moscow. Trapped between forces ranged on both sides of the Iron Curtain, he becomes embroiled in a game of cat and mouse which ultimately sees him standing trial for espionage - and facing the death penalty if he does not reveal his connection with Mr Henderson and a British agent known as Smith (Richard Armour), for Sutton has become an enemy of the state, and the state are determined to prosecute a man they believe to be a spy who entered the Soviet Union under the guise of a computer manufacturer…

An exciting and vibrant entry into the successful thriller output from BBC Television, this series featured strong performances from William Sherwood, Frederick Treves, David Langton, George Pravda, Steven Berkoff, John Pickles and Blake Butler. The capacity of these serials to "globe-trot" without actually recording sequences overseas is a credit to the creativity and ingenuity of the writing and production teams involved. Regrettably, however, whilst this particular serial was globally exported, it was never commercially released, a sad factor inherent in a large majority of the thrillers which proved so potently addictive with audiences of the period.

Text © Matthew Lee 2004