Sins of Omission

The case starts with Lucy McGinty in an unenviable position: she is the bait. The target is a female KGB agent, and the people running the operation decide that the fastest way to bring her out into the open is to put a civilian in the trap. Bulman is not consulted, or not enough, and the episode lets that sit.

But the premise gives the hour a sharp edge the local cases lack. One minute the show is doing its usual rounds of private inquiry, the next it is in the middle of Cold War tradecraft, with players who do not play by local rules. DS Mackay keeps a foot in the procedural camp, and Thorley Walters' Bill Dugdale hovers around the edges of the affair, as he tends to do when matters get serious. The gear change is handled without dropping the partnership's rhythm, which is no small thing.

Murray Smith wrote it, Roger Tucker directed. Don Henderson's Bulman spends the hour doing the thing he does best, which is working out how to be angry and useful at the same time. Siobhan Redmond carries the riskier half of the story, and the episode is honest about what it is asking of her character. Being dangled in front of a trained intelligence officer is not a day's light work, and the show does not pretend otherwise. The scenes in which Lucy has to hold her nerve are the best in the episode, and Redmond earns every one of them.

The Cold War trappings date the hour, but the tension underneath them does not. Using someone you care about as bait is a sin of omission all its own, and the title knows it. The episode earns its place in the run by taking the espionage seriously while keeping the characters human.