Words of Advice

Two accusations land at Mulberry Street in the same week, and neither is comfortable. WPC Gillian Tate, played by Claire Hackett, alleges sexual harassment by Sgt. Viv Jones, a black sergeant played by a young Paterson Joseph, years before Peep Show would make him a household name. The allegation looks to have a hidden agenda, but it has to be taken seriously regardless. Alongside it sits an accusation of bribery that starts exposing just how deep the prejudice in the station runs.

For Tony Clark it's personal in a different way. His marriage to Sue is coming apart, this is his first disciplinary case, and his main witness has gone missing at exactly the wrong moment. Steve Trafford's script keeps the plates spinning without letting any of them shatter early, and Alan Dossor directs with the same steady hand he brought to the previous episode.

The casting does half the work. Neil Pearson's Clark is fraying at the edges, and Tom Georgeson's Harry Naylor and Siobhan Redmond's Maureen Connell orbit him like weather systems. The real interest is Joseph's Jones, a man on the receiving end of an accusation he may or may not deserve, and the station's reaction to him. The episode doesn't let anyone off the hook, and the station itself comes in for the roughest treatment of all.

What stays with you is how little of this is about solving anything. The bribery and the harassment are ways in, but the subject is the prejudice underneath, the stuff that lives in a station long after the case files close. Clark's home life isn't a subplot so much as a symptom. The bribery strand could have carried an episode on its own, and the fact that it shares the hour with the harassment complaint shows how much ground the show was willing to cover.