No Surrender

Makepeace gets injured chasing jewellery thieves with Dempsey, and her first day out of hospital runs straight into a bank robbery and a hijacking. Dempsey, who has just watched his partner get hurt, is not keen to put her in harm's way again, and the whole episode runs on that reluctance. It is the kind of protective instinct that would be sweet if it were not also completely unrealistic about who he is partnered with.

Paul Wheeler wrote it, Viktors Ritelis directed. Jamie Foreman's Ramsey, Tony London's Levey, Phil Smeeton's Rawlings and Jerry Harte's James Martin populate the criminal side, with Jim Beesley's jewellery thief starting the whole thing off. Ray Smith's Spikings and Tony Osoba's Chas Jarvis hold the police end, and Christopher Bowen, Trevor Steedman and Colin McFarlane are among the guests.

The clever bit is that Makepeace is the last person to sit a job out. Dempsey's concern is real, and the episode suggests it is also beside the point. She has spent the whole series proving she can handle herself, and a hospital discharge note is not about to change that. The episode lets her prove it again, in a bank that is being robbed, on her first day back, with her partner trying to steer her towards the exit. It went out on 21 September 1985, three weeks into the second series. It is the rare hour where the criminal plot is almost beside the point, and the real subject is what the two leads think they owe each other after she has already been hurt once. The bank and the hijacking just keep the pressure on while the pair argue about who gets to stand where.

It is an episode about care and worry and people who cannot help running towards the danger. The bank robbery is the set piece; the standoff about who gets to be in it is the story.