Threat

Sue Arden is a British-born Hollywood star back in London to rehearse a play, and the FBI has sent word that a credible threat is standing against her. Right-wing extremists, the warning says. Craven, Haggerty and North are assigned to keep her alive, and from the start the job smells wrong. A warning from across the Atlantic has a way of arriving as a rumour by the time it reaches the unit. There is a theatre, there is a star, and there are men with opinions about her, and the episode makes a virtue of the awkwardness of guarding someone in full public view.

Stephanie Beacham plays Arden with the right mixture of charm and steel, a woman used to being looked at and not much enjoying the way these new watchers do it. The threats keep coming, the protection keeps complicating itself, and the episode takes its time showing that neither the danger nor the job is quite what it first appeared to be.

Tom Brennand and Roy Bottomley wrote it, William Brayne directed. Jack Hedley is the Hon. James Bancroft, Frank Barrie is McCall, Douglas Milvain is Parker, Robert James is Griffiths, Richard Leech is Commander Knight and Pete Brady is a TV reporter. Beacham, who would later wear a great deal of shoulder padding in the eighties, is well cast here: glamorous enough to sell the star, sharp enough to suggest the woman underneath.

But the protective-detail format suits the show. It swaps the usual hunt for a waiting game, and the waiting is where the tension lives. Every public appearance is a chance for the threat to become real, and the unit has to watch without seeming to watch. The episode trusts its audience to notice that the most dangerous person in the room may not be the one holding the gun, and it is patient enough to let that land on its own.