The Final Cut - Episode 3

Urquhart's bad dreams are getting worse in the third episode, and Elizabeth is worried about him. He is making bad decisions, and one of them is to appoint Geoffrey Booza Pitt as Foreign Secretary, to replace Tom Makepeace.

Claire is shocked when Makepeace ends their relationship. Urquhart is complacent, but even he is stunned when Makepeace announces that he is standing for the leadership of the party. Claire and Booza Pitt are running Urquhart's campaign, but only a small majority of MPs are behind him.

Meanwhile Claire arouses the suspicions of Maria Passolides. She tells Maria that Urquhart is unable to help her trace her uncles' graves, and suggests that she should go to Makepeace instead. Wikipedia's account of the serial adds that Claire then helps Makepeace take the case further, and that Makepeace raises the cover-up repeatedly in Parliament.

Urquhart tries to avert the gathering disaster by announcing the happy news that the Cyprus peace treaty has been consolidated through agreement on the sea boundaries. Elizabeth meets Nures again, and learns that the first half of a substantial consultancy fee has been paid into a Swiss bank account. In the House, Makepeace attacks Urquhart about the cover-up on the Cyprus war graves.

The leadership ballot results then prove disastrous. Urquhart knows he needs a miracle. A flash of inspiration comes: he will leak information about the oil find and persuade the Greek Cypriots that they have been deliberately swindled. The result is the unrest that fills the final episode.

The leadership challenge is Davies's own development. In Dobbs's novel Makepeace does not openly challenge Urquhart for the party leadership but leads a popular movement against him, and Urquhart faces the prospect of losing a general election, with his cabinet urging him to resign to keep an undefeated record. Mattie Storin's murder is not mentioned in the novel, so the tape that hangs over the finale of the television serial has no equivalent there.

Ian Richardson and Diane Fletcher are joined by Paul Freeman, Isla Blair, Nickolas Grace and Yolanda Vazquez, and Kevork Malikyan returns as Nures. David Ryall, as Sir Bruce Bullerby, and Cherith Mellor, as Hilary Makepeace, are among the supporting cast. Mike Vardy directed the serial and Andrew Davies wrote it.

It was shown on 19 November 1995, a week after the episode in which Makepeace resigned and a week before the finale. The Spectator's Ian Hislop had written the day before that the serial was disappointing but not as bad as the critics said, and that its Cyprus plot was a bit silly. Viewers who stayed with it were given a Prime Minister, a leadership challenge and a war to rescue him.

IMDb voters give this episode 7.8 out of 10, close to the second.