Love You to Death

Dempsey is being stalked by a homicidal woman who is obsessed with him, and who hates Makepeace for being with him. That is the whole premise, and it is a nasty one: the threat comes from inside the fan club, as it were, and it is aimed at the partnership as much as at the man. There is no grand conspiracy to unwind, just one person's fixed idea, which is scarier.

Roger Marshall wrote it, and his credits go back to The Avengers, which tells you the pedigree. Tony Wharmby directed. The casting gives the episode its period charm. Suzi Quatro, between bass solos, plays Cathy, and Elisabeth Sladen, a long way from the TARDIS, plays Mrs. Barrett. John Boswall's Foley, Mike Savage's Ripley, Colin McFarlane's Det. Sgt. Watson, Barbara Barnes's Paula and Lex Milloy's Barrett fill out the world around them.

The episode works because the danger is domestic and therefore believable. No master criminal, no international conspiracy, just one person whose affection has curdled into something that wants the competition gone. Dempsey, who deals with armed men for a living, is visibly less comfortable with this, and the show lets that discomfort sit. The episode went out on 14 September 1985, early in the second series' autumn run. The casting is the draw: Suzi Quatro, the rock star, and Elisabeth Sladen, the Doctor Who regular, are odd choices on paper, and both land their parts with real conviction. It also lets Dempsey be the one who needs protecting, a position the action-man lead rarely finds himself in, and Michael Brandon plays the unease without losing the character's edge.

It is a reminder that the scariest thing in these dramas is often a single person with a fixed idea. This one takes the idea and runs with it right to the edge, and Makepeace, who is the target of the jealousy, ends up the one holding things together.