The Catch – Part 1

The Catch is the first Gold story not written by Kay Mellor, and it brings the series its most pointed subject. Mark Davies Markham's script centres on Sherrie, a young transsexual sex worker, and on whether anyone with power will take her seriously when she is attacked.

Her attacker is a man with power. Ed Smithson is a magistrate who works with Rose on her community project, a respectable figure in the scheme to manage street work. He stalks Sherrie, breaks into her flat, threatens her with a razor and rapes her. The episode's tension comes from the fact that he sits on the side of the system Rose has chosen to join.

The tolerance zone itself is under pressure. All the women working there are being targeted, and Rose's job, which promised a safer arrangement, is starting to look like a way of making the women easier to find.

Carol's story is darker in a different way. She accuses Vinnie, Curly's nephew, of spending money from the factory she inherited, and she arranges for him to be beaten up. He ends up in hospital. The woman who once poured boiling water on a client in a breakdown now uses violence calculatedly, and the series lets the change speak for itself. Wealth has not made Carol gentler.

Gold was made in 1997, and a story with a trans woman at its centre was unusual on prime-time ITV. Its sympathy is clear: Sherrie is a victim whom the system is likely to fail, and Rose is the only person in a position to help her.

The weakness is the Vinnie strand, which turns Carol into a woman who settles scores with hired muscle and makes her harder to like. IMDb users rated this episode the lowest of the whole series, a reflection perhaps of how far Gold had moved from the original Band of Gold.

Sherrie is played by Daniel Edwards, credited by Wikipedia as Danny Edwards, and the supporting cast includes Louise Atkins, Suzanne Hellmich and Joanna Hole. The two halves of the story were shown on consecutive Monday evenings in November 1997.

The strength is the Sherrie story, which uses the series' long-standing theme, men with power over women on the street, in a sharper form. It also sets up a direct test for Rose: will she side with a woman on the Lane or with a colleague from the bench? David Innes Edwards directs both parts.