Hostage to Fortune

Hostage to Fortune opens the sixth season with a bank job that goes wrong in stages. The gang get into the bank manager's house posing as a milkman and hold his wife hostage, then send the manager in to do the actual robbery while the real milkman and PC Danny Sparks, who has spotted the gang's car, get added to the collection. The wife is the anchor, and the men holding her are not playing at it. What starts as a heist turns into a standoff. Everyone in it is in over their head by lunchtime.

But the surrender that follows is not clean. One of the criminals makes a run for it, and PC Brian Kelleher shoots him dead. The aftermath lands as heavily as the shooting: Kelleher asks to be relieved of firearms duties, and the episode lets that decision sit instead of tidying it away. Inspector Kate Longton commands the response with Sergeant Joseph Beck and Sergeant George Parrish, while Detective Chief Inspector Mark Perrin (Edward Peel) and DS Dick Maltby (Sebastian Abineri) work the case. Angela Lavers's WDS Donnelly and Paul Chapman's David Ryan fill out the ranks, and Simon Williams doubles up as both Hugo Edward Venner and Mr. Jarvis, the sort of casting detail the show manages without fuss. The negotiation has its own rhythm, and the show trusts it.

Don Webb wrote it, Andrew Morgan directed. Anna Carteret is Kate Longton, with David Ellison as Beck, Noel Collins as Parrish, Mark Botham as Sparks, C.J. Allen as Kelleher, Edward Peel as Perrin, Sebastian Abineri as Dick Maltby, Angela Lavers as Donnelly, Paul Chapman as David Ryan and Simon Williams as Venner and Jarvis.

It is a strong opener, tense in the house and uneasy afterwards. The show has always been good at the moment after the violence, and Kelleher's quiet request is the episode's real ending. You come for the siege and stay for the small, human aftermath. The guns are put away early; the questions stay out much longer.