Borderline Case

The watch on Karl Peters' flat is patient and dull, and that is exactly the point. While a man from Special Branch sits on the street, Inman and the team go through Peters' charge sheet, looking for the shape of what he will do next. The charge sheet is the map of the man: every arrest, every address, every sign of what he might be planning. Their reading of him is blunt: he means to incite the London dockworkers into industrial action against their employers, and the whole exercise is aimed at stopping it before it starts.

Lewis Greifer wrote it and Tom Clegg directed, and the result is an outing built on paperwork and observation rather than car chases. Peters is played by Richard Durden with the weary certainty of a man who has been watched before. Around him move Ginny and Alyson, Inspector Williams, Detective Sergeant Sherman and Detective Sergeant Clark, all of them working the case the way the job was actually done. The Doctor is in the credits too, which tells you the case will not stay paperwork forever.

And the episode is a fine snapshot of preventative policing at its most unglamorous. Nobody has done anything yet, and that is precisely the problem. Peters has form, the dockers have grievances, and the pair of them are a match waiting for a light. The tension is all in what might happen.

Derren Nesbitt's Jordan and Fulton Mackay's Inman anchor it, with David Garth as the Deputy Commander, Davyd Harries as Det. Sgt. Sherman, Tony Caunter as Det. Sgt. Clark, Richard Davies as Insp. Williams, Richard Durden as Peters, Georgina Simpson as Ginny, Ann Curthoys as Alyson and John Graham as the Doctor.

It grounds its tension in the mechanics of the job, and the watching itself is the story. It is the kind of hour that rewards patience, and the show trusts you to bring some.