Do or Die

Robbie Ross does not go undercover because he wants to. He goes because his last career appraisal was poor and he needs something back from the job. The assignment is an army training camp where a young private died in suspicious circumstances, and Robbie's task is to get inside the place and understand the regime that runs it. Undercover is not his natural habitat, which is part of the fun.

He does not like what he finds. The training is brutal, and the sergeant, Bill Kent, is the worst of it. Two more deaths follow, both instructors known for their harsh treatment of recruits, which points the enquiry somewhere uncomfortable: the dead men may not be victims of an outsider at all. The trail ends at Private Lombard, a woman the soldiers at the base apparently victimised, and the story underneath the discipline turns out to be darker than any drill. What happened to her happened under the camp's roof, and the team has to decide how much the institution knew.

Glenn Chandler and Mike Cullen wrote it, Morag Fullarton directed. John Michie's Ross carries the undercover thread with his usual nervous energy, backed by Blythe Duff's DS Jackie Reid, Alex Norton's DCI Matt Burke and Colin McCredie's DC Stuart Fraser. Peter Blake is properly chilling as Sergeant Kent, with Daniel Healy as Private Greg Fowler, Eilidh MacDonald as Sharon McDermott, Sandy Welch as Major Forbes Wishaw, Charles Jamieson as Major 'Jock' Spence and Alastair Gillies as Private Terry Collins.

A military setting is a gift to a crime show, with closed ranks and loyalties that answer to the badge first. But the real subject here is what the institution was prepared to hide. The camp is a pressure cooker, and the lid stays on for most of the running time. That is the point, and the show lets it sit.