Little Acorns

Two crises, and neither of them is small. A law and order conference is under threat from Heston, a right-wing agitator who has decided the proceedings would make a good platform, and down in a tower block, PC Nesbitt and PC Knowles have misjudged a bunch of local youngsters running riot and turned a disturbance into a siege. The episode cuts between the two, and the title suggests the point: little acorns, and the tall trees they grow into. It is a promise about how small troubles grow, and the episode keeps it.

The conference thread gives the episode its political edge. Richard Pearson plays Heston as a man who knows exactly how to use a crowd and a camera, and the security around the event becomes a test of nerve as much as procedure. The tower block thread is the more physical problem, with two uniformed men learning, in the sharpest way, what happens when you underestimate the temper of a place. Watt, Hawkins, Adler, Cullen and Evans all have a hand in the two emergencies, with Jenny Hanley appearing as Sara Hawkins and David Morris as Martin Lang.

Elwyn Jones and Arnold Yarrow wrote the episode. The directorial credit is missing from the records, which is a shame, because the siege sequences deserve their due.

The episode is a reminder that the show could do two things at once, and the contrast between the conference hall and the concrete stairwell gives it a real kick. Ideology on one side, chaos on the other, and the same stretched squad trying to hold the line on both. The two threads never quite knot together, which feels right; the point is the strain of holding both. It is not the subtlest hour the series produced, but it is a busy, confident one, and it closes the season with the team up against it from two directions at once.