Best Boys (1)

Bill Nash smiles at Stuart Grady, and in those few seconds both their lives change direction. Grady is older, Bill is a teenager, and the attraction between them is immediate and destructive. And the age gap matters, the script refusing to pretend otherwise; it is part of what makes the pair so dangerous to each other. Paul Abbott's script starts the story there, in a look, and lets the consequences do the rest. Before long the pair is heading somewhere murderous, and nobody gets off the train.

At home, Fitz's new son arrives, and the baby is not the repair kit Fitz hoped for. The marriage keeps straining, and Judith starts seeking comfort with Danny. Judith's rebellion is quiet, which makes it more alarming. The new baby gets all the attention and none of the healing. Nobody in either house is safe, which is the point of running the stories together. The two stories run side by side, the violent one and the quiet one, and the episode treats them as the same kind of damage. The Fitz household scenes have a different temperature from the Grady story, and the contrast is the point.

John Simm and Liam Cunningham give Bill and Grady a chemistry that is hard to watch in the best way. Aisling O'Sullivan's Aileen and Suzy Yannis's Linda circle the edges, while the squad, Penhaligon, Temple, Skelton and Wise, waits for the trouble to become a case. Charles McDougall directed, and the episode keeps its camera close to both couples, as if daring them to look away. Robbie Coltrane plays Fitz as a man adding up his failures while a murder case assembles itself in front of him.

Some attachments are made to be broken. These two are made to burn, and the first part ends before the fire properly catches. The episode is a slow fuse, and it knows it.