The Sharp End

The Sharp End divides the partners and sends Ken back to the fire service. Alex and Harry are trying to win a lucrative security contract, and in the process they find themselves at odds with Ken, who is suspicious of the company they are dealing with. For the first time in the series, the two halves of Crawford Boon Security are not on the same side of a decision.

Ken's own case comes from a woman. Sarah Blake, a market trader, asks him to help her and other stallholders defend themselves against an extortionist who has been terrorising them with his thugs. Ken and Rocky take it on, and Ken's involvement goes deeper than usual because Sarah is the widow of one of his former colleagues from the fire brigade.

The case touches the origin of the series: the man who left the service, for the sake of a lung injury, is asked for help by the family of one who did not leave it.

Carolyn Pickles plays Sarah, and the cast includes Andrew Schofield, Richard Ridings and Steven O'Donnell. Niall Toibin plays Neville Crane and Pamela Duncan plays Mrs Crane. Saskia Wickham's Alex and Mark Benton's Charlie Hardiman are also in the cast. Tony Jordan, who also wrote Shot in the Dark, wrote the script, and Matthew Evans directs.

There is a small continuity point. The fan site records that Sarah's dead husband is called Jim here, while in Burning Ambition, in the fifth series, the fireman who died in the warehouse fire was Andy Blake. Whether the two are meant to be the same man, or colleagues of Ken's who shared a surname, is not explained.

The episode's interest is in its two strands. In one, Ken is on the side of the small traders, with a personal debt to a dead friend. In the other, Harry and Alex are on the side of a deal whose basis Ken distrusts. It is the series' habit to let Harry's commercial enthusiasm run ahead of Ken's judgement, and the partnership is tested by it.

IMDb users rate it in the middle of the series, with a score of 7.0.

What the premise shows is a late return to the fire brigade as a source of loyalty. Ken's career as an investigator began when the brigade let him go, and in the last year of the programme he is asked for help by one of its widows.