Temptation

Det. Chief Insp. Hawkins is given a security job in Kingley: a quarter of a million pounds' worth of jewellery and metals on display at an exhibition, with a full police escort attached. It is the sort of assignment that should be a formality. A quarter of a million pounds in one room is an invitation as much as an exhibition. Then the diamonds are stolen from under the escort's nose, and Hawkins is left holding an embarrassment the size of the invoice. The exhibition closes early, and the questions begin.

The episode becomes a recovery operation with a mystery at its centre: a haul that heavily watched should not have been liftable. The answer, when the squad works it out, is the sort that makes security men wince. The squad's embarrassment is the engine; nobody in Kingley is going to hear the end of it. Watt, Evans and Cullen close ranks, Snow, Nesbitt and Dodds do the ground work, and Jenny Hanley's Sara Hawkins keeps the personal side of the household in view.

Gary Waldhorn, long before The Vicar of Dibley, plays Bruton, and Michael Redfern's Arnold circles the exhibition alongside him, giving the investigation faces to work with. The supporting cast does its job quietly, which is what a theft like this needs.

Elwyn Jones wrote it, Matthew Robinson directed, and the episode keeps the mechanics of the crime off-screen until the reveal, which is all the better for the patience.

The title is doing double duty. The thieves were tempted, obviously. But so were the people who thought a police escort made the stock safe. It is a tidy puzzle piece of an episode, the kind that holds one detail back and makes the whole hour hang on it. This one earns its keep in the moment the guard looks away.