Jericho Scam

Chas Jarvis is getting married, and Dempsey and Makepeace are on their way to the wedding when they run into a bank robbery. It is another department's case, which should mean another department's headache, but Dempsey cannot let it go. His inability to walk past a crime in progress gets him framed for something he did not do, and suddenly the wedding guest is a fugitive. It went out on 13 September 1986, straight after the 'Burning' two-parter, and the show was wise to follow a blockbuster with something small and personal.

Jeffrey Caine wrote it, Robert Tronson directed. Makepeace is the one who steps up, risking her career to clear his name, and the episode is at its best when it shows how lopsided that bargain is: she has everything to lose, and she never hesitates. Lee Montague's Det. Chief Inspector Lacey and Andrew Sketchley's Det. Sgt. Taylor provide the institutional friction, while Jack Watson's Terence Harris, Michael Robbins's Simmons, David Goudge's Phelps and Martyn Whitby's Malley populate the case around them. The man who sets him up is another copper, and the betrayal lands harder for coming from inside the job. Makepeace's faith in him is the episode's quiet engine, and her scenes carry the emotional weight the chase scenes cannot.

The framing device lets the show do something it rarely tried: make Dempsey the victim of the system rather than its loudest critic. It suits him, in a way, a man who has spent two seasons bending the rules suddenly finding them bent back at him. Ray Smith's Spikings is on hand too, keeping the SI10 scenes alive while the case spins out of everyone's control.

And the wedding subplot gives the whole thing a deadline. Jarvis's big day keeps approaching while the people who believe in Dempsey tear London apart to prove what he already knows, that he is being set up. It is a good, honest thriller about the difference between being guilty and being caught.