Good As New

Sara Johns is the daughter of a Russian defector, and on a school trip a Soviet agent makes a move on her. The EYES team is alerted, and the case lands in Whitechapel, where one employee of a local firm takes more than a passing interest in the whole affair. Fred and Tessa go undercover to protect Sara, posing as a groundsman and a games mistress respectively, which is exactly as awkward as it sounds.

Maggie's end of the case is the darker one. Sara's estranged parents are dangerously close to revealing a major spy scandal, and every step they take towards the truth puts their daughter's life further at risk. The school trip, which should be the safest place in the world for a girl her age, becomes the most dangerous one. The Whitechapel setting, with its market stalls and tenements, gives the undercover work a proper sense of place.

Paul Wheeler wrote it and Carol Wiseman directed. Joanna Dukes' Sara is the girl in the middle, with Oliver Cotton as Stefan Johns, Rosalind March as Miss Dawkins, Margaret Whiting as Mrs Walker, Petar Vidovic as Serge and Neil Morrissey as Trevor, while Leslie Ash's Fred, Tracy-Louise Ward's Tessa, Jill Gascoine's Maggie and Don Warrington's Nigel work the case. It went out in April 1986, when the Cold War was still running at full power, and a defector's daughter was exactly the sort of human cost the news never mentioned. Paul Wheeler, who wrote it, also wrote Crack-Up later in the series, another story about what the job does to people.

The undercover comedy, Fred in a groundsman's overalls, is played lightly, and the Cold War dread underneath is played straight. The school trip scenes, all packed lunches and nervous teachers, do the quiet work of making the danger concrete. The two tones sit together better than they have any right to. And a young Neil Morrissey, years before Men Behaving Badly, pops up as Trevor, which is a nice bit of spotting for the audience.