If Dogs Run Free (2)

Christine survives the fire, and the bond forged in the smoke between her and Frost deepens into the series' last romance. The dog-fighting empire collapses around Berland piece by piece: the overdose of his own thug Lisowski, a stolen car full of cocaine, a solicitor turned informant, and a raid on the farm where the drugs, the money and the dogs are kept. Sean, drowning in guilt and unable to speak to anyone, hangs himself; his long-abused mother finally leaves Berland; and Berland, bereft, surrenders to Frost — understanding at last what the parents of the boy his son killed must have felt.

The copycat thread resolves into the series' most personal villain. The description of the culprit fits the station's new archivist, Jennifer — a woman whose home is full of obsessive clippings of Frost's cases. She is the daughter of his old colleague, the man Frost exposed for corruption years ago, who spent the rest of his life hunting for a way to bring Frost down too. Frost had been close to Jennifer as a child, but the obsession has passed from father to daughter. She lures him to a rooftop and orders him, at gunpoint, to jump. Frost tackles her; she is arrested. The past, in the end, comes for Frost wearing the face of a child he once knew.

And then the wedding. Frost asks Christine to marry him; her ex-husband Allen, a relapsed alcoholic who has been affable all along, pleads with her to take him back and is rejected. At the wedding itself, Frost and his best man Toolan reach the church — and all three are deliberately mown down by Allen's car. Allen dies instantly. Toolan dies later, of his injuries, his wife, Frost and Mullett at his bedside. The alternate endings, filmed and discarded, had Frost or Mullett die instead; David Jason chose the ending where the series' heart, George Toolan, is the one taken.

Later, Frost says goodbye at George's coffin and tells Christine he has dedicated his life to the job, treating it as a refuge, and gave up on a personal life — unlike Toolan — but he sees now that he must prioritise the life he has left. there is much time to make up. If Dogs Run Free (2), written by Michael Russell and directed by Paul Harrison, closes eighteen years with the series' final, most brutal irony: Frost survives the killer, the crash and the career, to learn, at the last, what the job has cost him and everyone he loved.

Eighteen years end here: a wedding, a crash, a coffin, and the series' final, brutal irony — Frost survives to learn what the job has cost him and everyone he loved.