Operation Nadine (1)

The body of a teenage girl is found, and the case drops Jane Tennison into a racial controversy she did not ask for and cannot control. The investigation takes her into a neighbourhood that distrusts the police on sight, and parts of her own team are no better. It does not help that the detective assigned to work beside her, DS Robert Oswalde, is also the man she recently had an affair with.

David Harvey confesses to the murder. Jane does not believe him, and neither does Bob. Bob is convinced the real culprit is the girl's young neighbour, Tony Allen, and between them they start to pick the case apart. The story they are being handed is too tidy, and the community's hostility makes every interview an argument. Jane has proven herself by now, which is exactly why the assignment reads as either a plum case or a trap. She is not sure which, and the episode lets her wonder.

Allan Cubitt and Lynda La Plante wrote it, John Strickland directed. Colin Salmon's DS Robert Oswalde carries his own history into the inquiry, and Helen Mirren's Jane has to work around it. John Benfield as DSU Michael Kernan, Jack Ellis as DI Tony Muddyman, Craig Fairbrass as DI Frank Burkin, Richard Hawley as DS Richard Haskons, Philip Wright as DC Lillie, Ian Fitzgibbon as DC Jones, Andrew Tiernan as DC Rosper and Lloyd McGuire as Sgt Calder fill out the ranks.

A confession you do not believe, a neighbour nobody wants to look at, and a team waiting to see if you sink. The case is hard. But the politics is harder, and Jane knows which one will break her first. She has never needed to be liked to do the job; this week, being tolerated would be a start.