Local Hero

A body hanging from the swing frame in the children's playground on the Allerdykes Estate. The estate has been regenerated, the community is rebuilding itself, and this is the past coming back to claim the present. The regeneration was supposed to bury the estate's old reputation; a body on the swings puts it right back where it started. A Community Watch member found the body on his early morning round. It's an image that does a lot of work in one frame: a fresh start, decorated with a corpse.

The suspicion falls on Harry Wallace, the man behind the estate's rebirth, the father figure of the whole renewal. Jackie Reid is convinced he couldn't kill anyone, and she fights to clear his name. But the evidence quietly suggests he's not all he seems, and her colleagues start to fear that her feelings for Wallace are clouding her judgement. She holds her line anyway, and the case gets harder for everyone because of it. The more Jackie pushes, the more the unit pulls away, and the tension between them becomes the case's second mystery.

Glenn Chandler and Mike Cullen wrote it, Adrian McDowall directed. Phil McKee plays Harry Wallace with the right mixture of charm and defensiveness, Chris Young is Tommy Bannerman, Katie McEwen is Jennifer Cameron, James Ryland is Martin Rourke and Heydn McCabe is Frankie Hamilton. Blythe Duff carries the emotional weight as Reid, with John Michie, Alex Norton and Colin McCredie around her.

The episode is really about how hard it is to believe badly of someone you admire. Jackie's loyalty looks like weakness from the outside, and the show has the nerve to let her be wrong about it without punishing her for being human. It asks what you do with your belief in someone when the facts start to argue with you, and it doesn't pretend there's an easy answer. The body on the swings was never the only thing hanging over this estate.