I remember some details of running scared Spoiler alert for 30 year old programme
There was a crime - an armed robbery I think - and the robbers glasses broke when he was getting away. He jumped in a cab because of a problem with the getaway car. One lens of the glasses was recovered at the scene but the other was recovered by the cab driver.
It turns out that the robber is a well known crime lord type and his glasses prescription is v unusual. Finding the missing lens will crack the case!
Everyone is super cockney and refers to the glasses as “bins”. I lived in leafy suburban north London so this was tremendously exotic.
The cabbies granddaughter (red haired girl - Paula?) has an Asian best friend whose parents run a shop. They are being blackmailed/extorted by a racist gang who are somehow connected to bank robber/crime Lord dude with the dodgy bins.
In a convoluted plot point I don’t quite remember, the granddad cabbie hides the bins and leaves clues. He dies at some point - can’t remember how.
One of the clues is a metal roller thing that fits an old fashioned music box. It has a bumpy surface. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
The Asian shopkeepers wish to return to India because of all the racism and crime extortion. Their daughter (Narinder?) was born in London and doesn’t want to leave her friends. Red haired lass doesn’t want her to go.
The racist crime gang get hold of the music box thing and decide it plays a tune that sounds a bit Asian like. They play it to the shopkeepers, because as Indian people they most know all Indian things (tch! Pesky racists). The mother somehow realises it’s connected to the bins and decides to mislead them by saying it’s a song about a shop round a corner or some such. Her husband doesn’t know what’s going on but goes along with it.
Paula works out that the music box thing with the bumpy surface (I TOLD YOU THAT WAS IMPORTANT) contains a message in Braille. She decodes the message and finds the bins.
Some sort of exciting race against time ensues. Paula’s family don’t want her to find the bins...not sure why...some sort of east end thing. Narinder is desperate to stay in London, so wants robber crime Lord to be banged up. Paula wants Narinder to stay and wants to do what her grandfather would have wanted.
It ends up with Paula on the woolwich ferry with the bins. The criminals are on one side of the Thames and the police on the other.
She throws something into the river....oh NO!
It’s ok! She still has the bins and she gives them to the police. She threw away her grandads glove that they were wrapped in because she didn’t want to see it in court.
It’s details like this that clutter my brain and mean I can’t find my glasses EVERY MORNING.