Visitor from Moscow

A KGB officer arrives in London, and for once nobody is supposed to arrest him. Kamarov has been sent to coordinate security for a forthcoming visit by a Russian VIP, which means the Special Branch team is expected to work alongside the very people it normally spends its time watching. The visit cannot be cancelled and cannot be trusted, so it must be managed. Inman tells Jordan to help the visitor with the arrangements. The results are disastrous. It is the kind of job nobody volunteers for twice.

There is something quietly funny about the premise, and the episode knows it: a branch built to keep Soviet intelligence out of the country hosting a Soviet intelligence officer and calling it cooperation. The security arrangements lurch from awkward to alarming, and Jordan is stuck in the middle, trying to make the partnership work without giving away the farm. Jordan's job is to be helpful without being useful, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Kamarov is courteous and impossible to read, and the whole operation develops the atmosphere of a dinner party where nobody trusts the cutlery. Helpfulness is the currency here, and Jordan is expected to spend it freely.

Paul Wheeler wrote it, Dennis Vance directed. Derren Nesbitt is Det. Chief Insp. Jordan, Fulton Mackay Det. Supt. Inman, with Morris Perry's Charles Moxon and Keith Washington's Det. Con. Morrissey. Alan Browning plays Kamarov, Raymond Westwell Sholov, Jack Shepherd Peter Watson, Claire Nielson Charlotte, Alan Haines Harper and Ronald Magill Mr. Herridge.

'Visitor from Moscow' is a bureaucratic nightmare dressed as a spy story, and the nightmare is the point. The danger lives in the arrangement itself. And the episode leaves you with the uncomfortable sense that this kind of cooperation was never going to end well for anyone. Everyone smiles, and everyone is counting the exits. The visit ends, and everyone involved is older than they were.