A Date with Leonidas

The day starts badly and gets worse. A young man named Alex Leonides has carried a vow of vengeance since his teenage years, and he has picked this day to cash it in. Jordan ends up interrupting what looks for all the world like a wedding ceremony. Eden, back at the office, accepts a parcel and finds that it contains death itself, which is not how anyone wants their afternoon to go. Before the day is over, both men have cause for concern. It is one of those days that starts in a hurry and never slows down.

The episode runs on that twin-track unease: two senior officers each in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a family called Kalergaropolous caught in the middle of it. Leonides is the engine of the story, but the drama belongs to the people he drags through his grudge. The parcel and the interrupted wedding both point back to the same vow, and the day holds together because the threat is personal. Personal threats do not follow the rules. The vow gives the plot its shape; the afternoon gives it its teeth.

Scott Forbes wrote it, Dennis Vance directed. Wensley Pithey is Detective Supt. Eden, Derren Nesbitt Det. Chief Insp. Jordan, with Jennifer Wilson's W. Det. Sgt. Helen Webb and Keith Washington's Det. Const. Morrissey in support. Damien Thomas plays Alex Leonides, Tamara Hinchco Katina Kalergaropolous and Harry Tardios Mr. Kalergaropolous, while Kenneth Gilbert's Det. Sgt. Rowney and Michael Beint's Det. Sgt. Madgwick hold down the station side and Michael Keating turns up as Det. Constable Pearce.

A teenage grudge is an odd engine for a security-police story, and it works here because nobody has time to see it coming. The machinery of the state is caught flat-footed by one determined young man. And the episode knows exactly how funny and how frightening that is. The day ends with both men still standing, and neither one celebrating.