P.C. George Dixon is a long-serving traditional copper who is due to retire shortly. He takes a new recruit under his aegis and introduces him to the easy-going night beat. Dixon is a classic ordinary hero but also anachronistic, unprepared and unable to answer the violence of the 1950s.

A race car driver marries a woman for her money and plans to murder her. An old suitor steps in to help her but the driver takes steps to eliminate the rival. But there's a flaw in the driver's plans.

Detective Inspector Campbell (Gordon Jackson) looks into the murder of a teacher at a girls school where there are a number of suspects, including her colleagues and the married man she had been seeing.

The relationship between brothers Terry and Matt, both active in the IRA, comes under strain when Terry begins to question the use of violence.

Two reporters are held hostage in old castle, by thief, looking for jewels, that he had buried, after robbing a local house.

Unknown to everyone but his shady Middle Eastern bosses, watchmaker Hawkins is actually a professional hired assassin with a predilection for killing his targets with bombs. After disposing of a dictator and millionaire, Hawkins is assigned to kill a politician who is heading to a remote hotel, The Green Man, for a secret tryst with his secretary. There, however, Hawkins' plot is discovered by vacuum salesman William Blake, who determines to stop him.

Police find that everyone had a motive for the murder of a wealthy woman.

A train disaster is told in four short stories to give character studies of the people involved, how it will affect them and how they deal with it.

A woman has been sentenced to death by hanging. Her cousin believes she is innocent and he works against time to prove it before she is executed.

A clerk sees his big chance to escape a humdrum existence, but his resolve is tested as many unexpected obstacles arise.