Return To Sender

A former British agent who defected to the Soviet Union turns up back in London without warning, which is the kind of event that embarrasses two countries at once. The instinct in such cases is to silence him and tidy up. Palfrey decides the stakes need raising instead, and sets out to help a fellow spy who is anxious to get home. The title is the plan. The man came back, so the question is whether he can be sent back safely, or at all. The instruction to silence him comes wrapped in the usual official euphemism, which Palfrey reads the way other men read weather. Both sides would rather the whole business simply went away, which is exactly why it will not.

Leslie Phillips plays Styles, and it is a treat to see him somewhere far from his Carry On days, doing quiet, shabby work in the corners of the story. Philip Broadley wrote the episode and Gerald Blake directed it, and it aired on 14 May 1985. It is the second series' quieter kind of story, heavy on conversation and light on spectacle, and all the better for it.

Alec McCowen is Palfrey, with Caroline Blakiston as the Coordinator, Clive Wood as Blair, Briony McRoberts as Caroline, Clive Francis as Nikolai Baliev, Fiona Walker as Frankie and Vivienne Ritchie as Becky.

The episode works the gap between the grand sweep of Cold War politics and the smaller, messier anxieties of the people caught in it. Everyone here has a loyalty and a way out, and the two are rarely the same thing. Watching Palfrey hold the line between them is most of the pleasure. And the ending, fittingly for the title, leaves the return itself an open question. It is a fine example of the show's knack for keeping its wit while its people face the serious end of the profession.