Love the One You're With

The arms deal is done and the shooting has happened, which means the interesting work starts now. Love the One You're With is an aftermath episode in the best sense: the violence is over, and everyone is left holding the pieces, including the pieces they'd rather drop. The season finale landed in May 2023 with the series' questions still half-open, and it suits the show's temperament that it doesn't try to slam them shut.

Stevie Neil spends the hour clashing with the spooks, intelligence agents who operate on a different set of rules and don't mind showing it. It's the episode's most satisfying collision: two different ideas of policing meeting in a corridor. Mo learns the truth about his father, and it lands the way truths usually do, late and heavy. And Grace has to face the fact that the promise she made Angela may simply be beyond her. A promise is a lovely thing until it meets the real world, and this episode is mostly about that meeting. It lets Grace sit with the possibility of failure, and it doesn't manufacture a rescue to spare her.

Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson wrote it, Gilles Bannier directed. Siân Brooke, Katherine Devlin, Nathan Braniff, Richard Dormer, Dearbháile McKinney, Martin McCann, Jonathan Harden, Joanne Crawford, Andrea Irvine and Andi Osho all put in the usual solid work, though the hour belongs to the quieter scenes between Grace and Angela, where the whole season's weight settles. The spook-versus-uniform stand-offs are the loud part; the promise is the part that matters. The finale gives every regular at least one moment, which is the sign of a cast the writers have learned to trust.

The first series ends with the team still standing, which is not the same as fine. Secrets have been aired and loyalties tested. The spooks have been told where to get off, at least for now. It's a close, careful ending, and a remarkably grown-up place to stop.