Fee

The episode begins with Spender in poor physical shape. He has fallen from a roof and hurt his back badly enough that he is in no mood to be asked for anything. Keith Moreland is worried about a friend, Fee, who may be in trouble, and asks him to look into it. Spender, bad back and all, agrees reluctantly. That reluctance is the whole entry point, and it is worth noticing that no superior, briefing or assignment is involved anywhere in it.

What he finds is worse than a man with money problems. Fee's girlfriend Jody is a heroin addict and she is at the mercy of her supplier, Mick McDonna. The couple are in debt and in danger, held not by force but by her need, which is the mechanism McDonna works. From there the case opens outward into something larger: the episode uncovers corruption inside the drugs squad. The dealer is the visible end of the trade and the officers who are supposed to be suppressing it are the actual subject.

Julie Graham carries the human centre as Jody. Her addiction is what keeps the couple in place, and the episode is honest that the economics of a habit are more effective than threats. Nigel Terry's McDonna is played as a professional the operation depends on rather than as a monster, which is the more unsettling choice. Ian Cullen's Kelley and Melanie Hill's Sue Styles sit on the institutional side of the story, and no source states which officers are implicated or how far the corruption runs.

The structure is what makes the episode work. Spender is not investigating his own colleagues as part of an internal inquiry; he walks into them from outside while doing a favour for a sick friend, so the corruption lands as a discovery rather than as a premise. This is the series' recurring complaint about institutions, dressed up as a single week's case, and it is the reason the hour is darker than its neighbours. The villain is visible and the corruption is not.

There are two weaknesses. The couple at the centre are defined by Jody's addiction and Fee's trouble rather than given weight of their own, so the human story motivating the whole hour is carried by the plot rather than by the people. And the resolution is not documented anywhere: how the corruption is uncovered, what happens to any of the characters, and the outcome of the case are all missing from the record. Spender is also physically compromised in a way that matters to the case rather than as a joke, which is a first for the series. The guest cast on paper is the strongest of the season, and it delivers.