Given to Acts of Violence

Frank Egan has just got off scot-free on a murder charge, and Dempsey and Makepeace are shadowing him. His next job appears to involve a bird man and haggis, which is not a sentence you expect to write about a professional criminal, and it leads the pair into some theatrical undercover work: Makepeace posing as a floozy, Dempsey as a pilot. Nothing about the case makes obvious sense, which is precisely why the disguises are needed.

The disguises are the fun of the episode, and the show knows it. There is something gloriously daft about an upper-class English detective sergeant being sent in as a floozy while her American partner plays airman, and Jonathan Hales's script leans on it happily. William Brayne directed, and the tone stays just this side of farce, which is the right side. It went out on 1 February 1985, when the show was still young enough that the sight of an American detective working London streets was its own novelty.

Brian Croucher makes a good fist of Egan, all swagger and fresh air after his acquittal, with Steve Emerson's Hadley beside him. Ray Smith's Spikings holds the office end, and the legal scaffolding is well cast: Tony Osoba's Det. Sgt. Chas Jarvis, Michael Cashman as the prosecuting counsel and Frank Duncan on the bench as judge. Ian Thompson appears as Hutchings, Dave Cooper as Willie Ferguson, and the guest list runs to Ian McCulloch, Maureen O'Farrell, Angus MacKay, Neville Jason, Christopher Saul and Mike Mungarvan. Michael Cashman, who would soon join EastEnders and much later sit in the European Parliament, makes the prosecuting counsel more than a walk-on.

It is a knowingly silly premise played straight, which is the right way to play it. And you watch for the disguises, then stay for the way the pair wear them, because a disguise is only as good as the person carrying it, and these two are very good at carrying one.