Ghetto Blasters

A man has died in police custody after taking a deadly drug, the black community is at the edge of disorder, and Rockliffe and Flight believe they know who the dealer is. The question the episode closes on is what happens if they act. It is the hardest hour of the first series and the clearest demonstration that this was not a cosy training drama.

The premise puts the squad's judgement on trial rather than a criminal's. A death in custody in a community already at odds with the police, an identified suspect and a decision about timing is a story in which the force itself is the exposed party, and the episode gives that exposure a face by promoting a Detective Chief Superintendent into the cast, played by Iain Rattray.

Ian Hogg's Rockliffe and Edward Wilson's Charles Flight are the two officers who know the name, which is the only time in the first series that a case is explicitly the property of the pair. Six recruits appear and their function is containment rather than investigation, which is a different use of the ensemble from the surrounding weeks.

Malcolm Terris's Munro and Iain Rattray's Roberts supply two ranks of uniformed authority, and the presence of the higher one is the episode's signal that the force's reputation, not the estate's peace, is what is at risk.

Richard O'Keeffe wrote it and Jeremy Ancock directed, the second of his two first-series episodes. The transmission date is documented by the BBC's own programme records for 13 February 1987, which give 21:30 on BBC1 London, one of the two dates used to establish the run's slot.

The episode also sits at the centre of the run's later critical argument. Reporting in the trade press in February 1988 described the BBC tightening its policy on staged violence, and the series' willingness to put material like a death in custody on screen at half past nine is what that discussion was about. The motive was attributed to an unnamed source and is recorded as a reported claim, not as a reason for anything.

IMDb holds no rating for this episode, and no source records what the squad does about the dealer or how the death is accounted for. What the hour establishes is the show's range: a series that opened with a hooded prowler and a mugging on the Dragon Estate was prepared to spend an episode on the consequences of a police death in custody.