Written by Terry Nation, Robert Hardy plays the eponymous hero of this 1972 one-off BBC drama; an occult detective who travels around in a lavish, bulletproof locomotive called 'The Tsar'. Along with his assistants Thomas and Caleb (Julian Holloway and John Rhys-Davies) Baldick is called in to investigate the latest in a series of brutal deaths at a desolate abbey.
During World War I, young Londoner Tom Grattan is sent to live with relatives in rural Yorkshire, where he becomes involved in espionage, sabotage, and other wartime adventures with local friends, facing threats like spies and German POWs.