The Anastasia Syndrome

Special Branch comes calling on Inspector Jean Darblay with an unusual request: investigate a possible threat in advance of a planned royal visit to Hartley. For once the case is not about what has happened, but about what might. The royal party has not arrived yet, and the whole of the episode ticks along to that date.

The change of register suits the show. Instead of solving a crime, Darblay has to find a danger before it exists, which is a different skill entirely. The station works around her, with Sergeant Joseph Beck, Sergeant George Parrish and PC Roland Bentley keeping the ordinary business of Hartley moving while she chases shadows with the security services. Detective Sergeant Dave Melchett and Detective Chief Inspector Leckie bring the weight of procedure, and the episode populates the town with people who might matter: Miss Bastienne, a man who answers to the letter O, and Mr. Bhattacharya. The title, The Anastasia Syndrome, hints at identities and the trouble of proving who anybody really is.

Steven Morgan wrote it, Pennant Roberts directed. Stephanie Turner is Jean Darblay, with David Hargreaves as Tom, David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, Mark Drewry as Bentley and Geoffrey Larder as Melchett. Michael Forrest plays Detective Chief Inspector Leckie, Vivienne Burgess is Miss Bastienne, Robert Ashby is the man called O and Madhav Sharma is Mr. Bhattacharya.

The looming royal visit gives the hour a ticking clock the series rarely uses, and the change of pace works. It is still a police story, still rooted in the town and its people, but played with the tension of a security operation rather than the patience of a routine inquiry.

Watching a local inspector talk intelligence officers through the back streets of her own patch is quietly satisfying. She knows every alley, and they know it.

The episode lands well because the threat stays human-sized. Hartley is not a city of plots; it is a town with secrets, and that is plenty.