Lest Ye Be Judged

Clark and his team swap London for Liverpool to look into an armed robbery conviction, and the further they get from home, the less comfortable the case becomes. The robber's confession may have been beaten out of him. A local reporter has an axe to grind and keeps sharpening it in public. And the officer at the centre of it all is accused of bending the rules just to get the conviction in the first place.

The title is a warning from the Bible, judge not lest ye be judged, and it lands harder here than it might elsewhere because these are officers judging officers. Rob Heyland wrote the script, Charles McDougall directed, and the change of scenery does them both a favour. Liverpool gives the episode a different texture from the London ones, a city where everyone seems to know everyone, and the case can't be kept at arm's length.

The guest casting is wonderfully odd. Michael Angelis, best known as the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine and a veteran of Boys from the Blackstuff, plays Det. Insp. Kendrick. Edward Tudor-Pole, late of Tenpole Tudor, shows up as Teddy Dicks. Between them they give the Merseyside setting a flavour that a parade of generic telly cops wouldn't have managed. Siobhan Redmond's Maureen Connell is along for the ride, and the familiar pressure from David Lyon's Huxtable and Tony Doyle's Deakin follows the team north.

It's a sturdy episode rather than a showy one. The conviction gets pulled apart, the question of how it was obtained gets a proper airing, and the team heads back to London with the mess still smouldering. For a series that usually keeps its investigations close to home, the trip is worth making. The confession question is the heart of it, and the episode keeps it in view even when the reporter and the locals are shouting over it.