Kiss

Kiss is about the past refusing to stay buried. Anita lies injured somewhere after George Ferguson ran her down, and nobody knows what has become of her. Rose, meanwhile, discovers that a respectable business is no protection when people learn who you used to be.

The blow comes at the leisure centre where Scrubbit has work. When it emerges that the cleaners were once prostitutes, Rose faces trouble from the people who hired them. The episode's synopsis is brief, but the point is clear: the women have changed their trade, not their reputation. Kay Mellor's series is consistently interested in how the label outlasts the work, and this is the episode where that cost becomes practical.

Rose has also fallen out with Tracy and Colette. Tracy's use of Rose's house for business and her growing dependence on Alf Black's drugs have opened a gap between the two women who went to London together, and Colette, whom Rose dislikes on instinct, is on the other side of it.

The business has an enemy inside. Brenda, who works for George Ferguson's rival firm Klenzit, has taken a job with Scrubbit and is passing information back to Ferguson. It is a familiar device, but it makes the point that the women are playing against a man with more money and fewer scruples.

The episode's end changes the direction of the series. Curly, Carol's former client, the man she once scalded and later owed her life to, has become a friend. He is found dead in Carol's house with his throat cut. For Carol, who spent time in a psychiatric ward and whose history with Curly is known to the police, the discovery is a disaster as well as a grief.

The death of Curly is the series' cruellest turn. He was the one man in the first series who changed from suspect to protector, and killing him signals that the second series will not offer the same comfort as the first.

The weakness of the episode is its reliance on stock devices, the spy in the camp and the hidden injury, which give it the feel of a weekly serial rather than the more searching drama of the first series. Its strength is the leisure-centre storyline, which turns the women's attempt at respectability into a story about what society will and will not forgive. Rebecca Callard joins the cast as Tula, and Betsan Morris Evans directs.