The Hit

After a long night on a fruitless stakeout, Dempsey and Makepeace watch an SI10 colleague get shot by an American hitman right in front of them. The killer has been targeting a pimp, but his real target appears to be somebody higher up, and the hunt is on. Complicating matters, one of the prostitutes in the case turns out to be an old school friend of Makepeace's. It went out in October 1985, and the American accent on the gun is the kind of detail the show could not resist, given where its own leading man comes from.

Murray Smith wrote it, Tony Wharmby directed. The cast is stuffed with faces you will recognise. Billy Murray, a decade or so before The Bill made him famous as Don Beech, is Billy Kennaway; Amanda Pays, a couple of years from Max Headroom, is Tiffany Grace; and Patti Boulaye's Faith McColl adds a different kind of glamour. Eamonn Walker, later of Oz, is Edwin Shore, with Ray Charleson's Joe Delaney, Tony Osoba's Chas Jarvis and Stephen Hattersley's Det. Sgt. Jimmy Bartholomew around them. Ray Smith's Spikings is in the mix too, and the guest depth extends to Arne Gordon, Mark Heath and Richard Ashley in the smaller parts.

The old school connection gives Makepeace a personal stake the episode uses well, and the mystery of the hitman's real target keeps the pressure on. The killer is working up the ladder from the pimp to someone higher, and the episode keeps that chain visible so the audience can play along. It is a busy, well-stocked hour that knows exactly what it is doing, and the single gunshot that sets it all off earns its keep. The show rarely wasted a good guest, and this episode gets full value from every one of them, right down to the faces that only register on a rewatch.