Bad Batch

A poisonous batch of drugs is moving through Belfast, and the episode earns its title the hard way: every call about it is a gamble on who turns up next. The team spends the hour chasing the supply while the McIntyres work just as hard at the other end, covering their tracks in all the noise. A poisoned supply means poisoned tempers, and the episode is quick to show how a health crisis becomes a policing one. It was the second of the six episodes that made up the first series' spring run.

Annie Conlon is the one who feels it most. Terrifying news lands on her, and from that moment the episode stops being a straight drugs story and becomes a trust problem. Everyone around her is a colleague and a suspect at once, and Katherine Devlin plays that slow, sickening re-reading of familiar faces beautifully. There's a moment where Annie has to decide whether the person beside her can be trusted with the next ten minutes, and the camera holds on the decision. The procedural and the personal feed each other until they're hard to separate, which is exactly the point the show is making about the job.

Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson wrote it, Gilles Bannier directed. The ensemble does its usual work, Siân Brooke's Grace, Nathan Braniff's Tommy and Richard Dormer's Gerry Cliff all present and correct. But this is Devlin's episode, and the show is smart enough to let her carry it. Her Annie is the one asking the questions the station doesn't want asked.

The lesson is a sour one, and it's meant to be. When the drugs are bad, the people closest to the uniform start looking dangerous too, and the episode doesn't pretend there's a clean answer. Some weeks the job is about catching the right person. This one is about figuring out who you can still call a friend by Friday, and Annie is left holding the question with nobody to share it with.