Bad Pennies

Bad Pennies is about a man who comes out of prison to find that everything he left behind has been spent. Ken and Harry are hired to organise security for a couple, Malcolm and Jessica Marston, against an ex-convict, Stan Keating, who is looking for revenge.

Stan has just been released. He wants his share of the proceeds of a robbery that he and Malcolm carried out together, and when he looks for it, he finds that half of it is missing. Worse, Malcolm has married Jessica, who was Stan's girlfriend. And Stan learns a further fact: he has a daughter, Annabelle, who has never known that he exists.

He goes on the warpath. Ken and Harry find, as they try to resolve the situation, that it is more dangerous than either had expected. They have been hired to protect a couple whose past is the cause of the trouble, and who have a good deal to lose.

Warren Clarke, who has a page on this site, takes the part of Stan. He had played Geoff Greenaway, the father who comes for his son, in the first series, and returns here as a father who has come back for his daughter. John Bowe and Mel Martin play the Marstons, and Julia Dunlop plays Annabelle.

At CBS, meanwhile, Rocky is busy organising a car rally, but Laura ends up doing most of the work. It is a small comic thread beside a grim one, and it shows the usual split between the partners: Rocky has the idea and Laura does the planning.

Robin Mukherjee wrote the episode and Graeme Harper directs.

The central idea fits the series well. The returning convict has a legitimate grievance: he served the sentence, he is owed his share, and the people who took his girlfriend and his money have a daughter he has never met. That puts Ken and Harry on the side of the couple with the most to hide, and the episode is interested in the conflict that creates.

The story turns on whether Stan will take his revenge, claim his daughter or simply collect what he is owed, and Ken and Harry stand between him and each of them. The set-up, a man's past arriving in the lives of those who profited by his absence, is a sound one. The title's play on bad pennies that keep returning describes it exactly, and Stan is the penny.