Out of Darkness

SI10 is hunting the so-called Thriller Killer, who takes blue-eyed brunettes and kills them within twenty hours. It is the sort of case that makes everyone's skin crawl, and then it gets personal: the killer takes an interest in Makepeace. As she and Dempsey close in, he demands to meet her one on one, with a hostage's life riding on her showing up. Every hour that passes raises the price of a mistake, and the twenty-hour limit leaves no room for the usual slow build.

John Field wrote it, Christopher King directed. And the episode is a proper dread-builder, the pacing unhurried in the way that makes the bad news land harder. Julia Watson's Terry, Garry Cooper's Swabey and Tim Preece's psychiatrist circle the investigation, while Roger Watkins's publican, Patrick Murray's launderette manager and Lesley Clare O'Neill's Phyllis give the world its texture. It first went out on 11 October 1986, and the supporting cast does the quiet work of making the world feel inhabited, from the pub to the launderette.

The premise puts Makepeace at the centre in a way the show rarely managed, and Glynis Barber carries it. She is the one being hunted, and she is also the one running the case, and the episode trusts her to hold both. Dempsey, for once, is the one doing the worrying from the outside. The killer's obsession with Makepeace is the engine of the hour, and the story never lets the audience forget who is being hunted, even when the case seems to move elsewhere.

It is one of the season's darkest hours, built on the quiet terror of being picked out of a crowd by someone who has already decided what you are. The episode trusts the audience to sit with the dread, and it is all the stronger for it. The twenty-hour clock gives it a shape, and the demand for a meeting gives it a terrible pull towards its own ending.