Private Enterprise

Anyone who has applied for the Flying Squad with a Superintendent's crown in mind would have taken the news badly, but Tony Clark's transfer comes with a twist even he didn't see coming. A low-level drug dealer exposes corruption at Mulberry Street, Clark's office gets locked down, and the promotion he wanted lands him somewhere else entirely: the Complaints Investigation Bureau, the Met's internal anti-corruption unit. His reward for ambition is a desk on the other side of the fence.

His first CIB case is his own station. A ring of officers has been taking kickbacks from laundered drug money, and Clark is expected to root them out from the inside, under cover, pretending he's still one of them. Chief Supt. John Deakin, who delivers the news, puts it plainly: "you're not CID anymore, you're CIB." Clark's answer, that his cover is fireproof because no one would ever take him for a grass in his own nick, sounds confident. It reads as something else entirely.

J. C. Wilsher wrote the episode and created the series, and Charles McDougall directed it with a steady, unflashy hand. Clark recruits his wife Sue as an unofficial assistant, takes up with WPC Jenny Dean, and tries to stay ahead of colleagues like Ciarán Hinds's Det. Insp. Micky Flynn and Ben Chaplin's Andy Spence. Neil Pearson carries it well, playing a man visibly uncomfortable in his own skin, and the ensemble around him, Tom Georgeson's Harry Naylor and Siobhan Redmond's Maureen Connell among them, makes the station feel lived-in.

Colin Towns wrote the score. It's a small detail, but it matters, because the music does a lot of the worrying for you.

For a pilot it's remarkably sure of itself. The corruption case resolves, but the arrangement Clark has signed up for doesn't. He's still a cop investigating cops, and the show knows the real case will run and run.