Crash Course

John Stafford arrives in Eastland with the top job and the usual hopes, and immediately finds the place runs on favours and old handshakes. The Old Boys' Network gets a name check early, and it sets the tone: promotion is one thing, but being accepted is quite another.

The first real test is Her Majesty's Prison Stornton, where the warders are threatening to walk out over staff shortages. Stafford is asked to send police support in, which puts him in the awkward position of shoring up another service's problems while his own house is still settling. The warders' grievances are not his to fix, which makes the request all the more awkward. He does not get the luxury of a gentle start, and the episode is wise enough to know that a threatened strike inside a prison writes its own tension.

Anne Stewart is beside him through it all, along with a cast of county faces who treat the newcomer with the polite wariness reserved for a man who might not know his place yet. There is a difference between holding the title and holding the room, and Stafford spends the hour learning which side of that line he is on.

Jeffrey Caine and Gerard Macdonald wrote it, Brian Farnham directed. Tim Pigott-Smith carries the centre as Stafford, with Judy Loe's Dr Elizabeth Stafford at home and John Scarborough's Gavin Aldrich, Julian Holloway's Sir Ian Harnett MP and Frederick Jaeger's Major Selwyn Davis circling the newcomer. Karen Archer's Anne Stewart, Erin Geraghty's Fiona, Michael Cochrane's Nigel Crimmond and Terence Harvey's Norman Ames fill out the ranks, with Michael McNally as a prison officer on the landing.

It is a solid opening, the kind that gives a new series somewhere to build from. And it leaves you wondering how long the Old Boys will keep smiling at him. Given what comes next, the answer is not very.