WAITING FOR THURSDAY

A decent little British assassination-plot countdown gets under way when IRAish terrorists skillfully kidnap the wife of tough Judge Hammond's milquetoasty clerk, Tom Richmond. If Tom doesn't cooperate with the kidnappers--they need his help to blow up the Judge, who sentenced their comrades to die--wife Paula will be finite. Restrained Mr. Jobson (The Evidence You Will Hear, etc,) handles this weary scenario with steady authority and psychological dig, zeroing in on trembly Tom's dilemma (despite his silence, the cops catch on) and on frisky Paula's sensualizing with one of her less idealistic captors. So the tension does exactly what it's supposed to do as the police try simultaneously to protect Judge H. from a bomb (they don't know where it is) and to locate the tiny village cottage where Paula is imprisoned. Unremarkable but remarkably inoffensive.