Hustling

The second series of Band of Gold opens a year on, with the fresh start under strain. Rose and Carol are running a cleaning co-operative, Scrubbit, with money from Anita, but as the episode's synopsis says, they cannot break their links with the old life, and the business is barely surviving.

The threats arrive quickly. George Ferguson, the businessman whose loan shark drove Gina on to the streets, is out of prison and wants revenge. He also owes money to a local gangster, Alf Black, played by David Bradley, and he sees Scrubbit as a way to clear the debt. He has a claim on it: his wife, Kathleen, backed the women's company after Anita told her about her long affair with George.

Anita fights back with cunning. She lets George believe the women want him involved and arranges a meeting at which he admits, on tape, that he still has money hidden away. Then she blackmails him. The victory is brief. George runs her down with his car and takes the tape from her handbag, and the episode ends with Anita's fate unknown.

Tracy, back from London, is the series' other centre. She is still on the game, living in Rose's house and turning it into a brothel, to Rose's dismay. She has a new friend, Colette, an emotionally damaged woman who specialises in S&M and whom Rose instinctively distrusts.

Lena Headey, later famous for Game of Thrones, plays Colette, and the character will prove far more important to Rose than either woman knows. At a party Tracy meets Alf Black, sleeps with him and accepts the drugs he supplies. He has plans for her, part of a scheme to bring drugs into the country.

Kay Mellor sets out the second series' themes in a single episode: money that never quite arrives, men who will not let go, and Tracy's slide into addiction. The tone is bleaker than the first series, a change Television Heaven's retrospective review also noted.

Peter Firth and Anita Carey also join the cast, as Brian Roberts and Glennis Minkin.

The weakness is the amount of plot machinery. Tapes, blackmail and a hit-and-run in one episode push the drama towards soap. The strength is that every scheme grows out of the characters' circumstances. Anita blackmails George because she has no other leverage; Tracy goes with Alf because he has what she craves. Betsan Morris Evans directs the opening three episodes of the series.