Rendezvous

"Rendezvous" parks Craven in a derelict mental institution and asks him to run security for the debriefing of a captured KGB agent. That is the whole episode, location and all, and it is a good use of a grim set. The building does half the work: peeling paint and the particular silence of a place built to hold people. Everyone inside has a reason to look shifty, and the walls make every raised voice sound like an accusation. It could have been a stage play, and that is meant as a compliment.

The interrogator watches the prisoner, and the prisoner watches the woman being questioned. And Craven, standing at the centre of all three, slowly stops being sure which of them is genuinely mad. Trained liars perform for each other, and the line between a breakdown and a bluff starts to blur. Tony Williamson's script keeps the room small and the stakes personal, and Terry Green directs with a quiet, watchful eye that suits the material. There is none of the usual Special Branch hustle; the tension here comes from people sitting very still.

Sewell is in his element, all flat patience and hard reading of faces. Patrick Mower's Haggerty hovers at the edges of the case, Paul Eddington's Strand drifts in and out of the official line, and the room fills out with Anthony Nicholls's Colonel Lang, Cyd Hayman's Nadya Chelnov, Geoffrey Chater's Sir Gerald Pastor, Paul Antrim's Detective Sgt. Maguire, Richard Cornish as a younger Lang, Barbara Kellerman's Michelle and Richard Steele's Davies. If you came expecting a double-cross a minute, you will be disappointed; the episode trusts a single room to hold your attention.

Locked-room suspense is an old trick, but this one earns it. Nobody in the room is telling the truth, and watching Craven try to find the one person who cannot help lying is plenty. The episode lets the uncertainty sit, and that is the right call.