Blooded

Deakin's logic is simple and grim: chemicals mean drugs, drugs mean money, and money means an undercover operation. The animal rights extremists threatening a pharmaceuticals giant are the excuse, and the operation that follows sends Connell undercover to find out who is burning down a chain of fur shops. It's the kind of assignment that looks straightforward on paper and never is.

J. C. Wilsher wrote it, Ian Knox directed, and the episode runs two tracks. Connell's undercover work is the engine, Siobhan Redmond clearly enjoying the chance to play someone with a cover identity and the nerve to maintain it. Alongside it runs Clark's worry for Naylor, who has taken a job with a pharmaceutical company that smells wrong to anyone with half a nose for these things. Tom Georgeson's Naylor walks into it anyway, which is what makes the worry real.

The supporting cast keeps the world busy: Simon Donald's Patrick Whelan, Suzanne Burden's Jo Austin, Hannah Miles's Fran Harding, Lyndon Davies's Luke Wakefield, all of them part of the pressure squeezing the operation from different sides. Tony Doyle's Deakin sits at the centre, doing what he does, which is making other people's risk his profit. Sylvestra Le Touzel's Sarah Teale keeps turning up through the season, a recurring face in the freelance world, and Barbara Wilshere's Kate Roberts is on the fringes again, the domestic thread the show refuses to drop.

It's a solid mid-season entry, the kind of episode that keeps the machinery turning without breaking new ground. The fires get traced, the company gets its answer, and Naylor comes through it. But the pattern is the thing: everyone in this show is always one job away from trouble, and the jobs keep coming. The undercover work suits Connell, and the episode gives her the best of the hour. The fur shop fires are the excuse, but the real investigation, as always, is into the people doing the investigating, and nobody comes out of it with clean hands.