Freezeheat

A refrigerated trucking company called Coldburn is the front for a drug racket, and the whole thing starts to come apart when Chas's lorry is attacked and he turns to Fred Smith for help. The name of the firm is a promise the episode intends to keep.

Chas is kidnapped by the Coldburn men and told to talk. He refuses, and his punishment is the trucking company's own product: he is locked in the deep freeze. The cold storage unit is a horrible idea for a threat, and the episode knows it, which is why the rescue works. The episode lets you sit with that for a while, a man slowly running out of time in the cold, before the EYES team arrives in the nick of time. And when the case is unpicked, it turns out a top-ranking drug squad commander was in on it all along, which is the kind of ending that leaves everyone feeling a bit dirty.

Terence Feely wrote it and Terry Marcel directed. Daniel Peacock's Chas spends most of the episode regretting his choices, with William Morgan Sheppard as Roker, Terry Mortimer as Crick, Tony Doyle as Denby-Harris, Robert Gary as Jimbo and Tim Whitnall as Jack, while Leslie Ash's Fred, Jill Gascoine's Maggie, Tracy-Louise Ward's Tessa and Don Warrington's Nigel work the rescue. It went out in May 1986, midway through the second series. Tony Doyle, who plays Denby-Harris, would later be the star of Ballykissangel, so the case carries a face the audience already knows.

The freezer scene is the one you remember, and the show has the sense to keep it simple: no music and no tricks, just the cold and the clock. The name Coldburn does a lot of work, and the show matches it: every scene on the firm's premises looks genuinely freezing. It is a solid, nasty little thriller, and the exposed commander is a reminder that in this show the corruption usually comes with a warrant card.