To Be a Somebody (3)

Billborough is gone, and the hunt for Albie takes over everything. Charlie Wise steps in as the new DCI, and Fitz is brought in to defuse a situation that has become both explosive and personal. Albie has not finished. He has plans left, tricks that turn a manhunt into a standoff, and he intends to make the city feel what he felt. The new DCI walks into a case where the previous one died on the job, and the weight of that is on every scene. The hunt has a shape now, and the shape is Albie's. The city is a suspect too, and the episode knows it.

The episode shifts its weight onto Ricky Tomlinson's Wise, a new voice in the middle of a team in mourning, and onto Robert Carlyle's Albie, who is no longer a grieving son but something colder. Tomlinson is exactly the right actor for the job, all bluntness and buried decency. Penhaligon and Beck keep the squad moving, Isobel Middleton's Catriona Bilborough carries the private grief, and the quarry and the hospital give the hunt its ground. John Henshaw's quarry foreman and David Holt's hospital administrator are small parts, but they keep the world feeling real.

McGovern and Fywell keep the tension wound tight. The revenge is for Hillsborough, and the episode never lets the audience forget what that means, or how far Albie is prepared to go. Edward Peel's Chief Superintendent keeps demanding results while the ground shifts underneath everyone. And the explosive tricks Albie has left are the kind of thing that make the final act genuinely hard to watch. The episode keeps the memory of Billborough in every room, which is exactly right.

There is a price coming due, and Wise and Fitz both know it. The only question is who pays it, and the episode makes you wait.