The Trojan Horse

A 16mm film reel turns up at Grange Crossroads, and the label on it is one word: Filth. Whatever is on the reel, the case stops being a find and becomes an investigation. Snow and Lincoln carry the early stages, following the trail to a man named Jennings at Wyvern House, and the deeper the officers dig, the darker the picture gets. The reel is high-quality equipment, which is its own clue: whoever shot it had money, and money changes what the case means. By the time Det. Chief Supt. Watt is talking about a conspiracy charge, the shape of the case is clear. But the film was never the point. The point is a girl, under age, and the people who used her.

Elwyn Jones's script handles this material carefully, and John Black directs with restraint. The episode leans on accumulating detail rather than confrontation, and that is the right choice. Frank Windsor's Watt steadies the room; Norman Bowler's Hawkins and Peter Childs's Grant work around him. Terence Rigby's Snow and Peter Clough's Lincoln did the finding, with John Flanagan's Pearson behind them, and every small exchange adds to the weight.

The guest cast does grim work well. Jeremy Wilkin is Jennings, the man at the centre of it all; Cheryl Hall plays Minerva Myers; Joby Blanshard is White, and Rosalind Elliot is the receptionist who may have seen more than she said. None of them is asked to perform villainy in capital letters. The script trusts the material to do the work, and it does.

This is the sort of episode that reminds you what the show was really about. No car chases, no clever reversals. Just patient police work against an ugly, slow crime, and a charge sheet that has to be built piece by piece. The title promises something smuggled in. The episode delivers it quietly, without flinching.