Call Sign Bravo

Stafford does it again. With Special Branch papers on their way to MI5, he steps in and intercepts them, and the ripple from that one decision reaches Whitehall before the hour is out. The man seems unable to let a sensitive document pass him by, which is either principle or a habit, and the episode refuses to say which. Intercepting papers bound for MI5 is the kind of move that makes enemies in high places, and Stafford collects them the way other men collect stamps.

The other thread belongs to Anne Stewart. Her son was caught up in a drug bust, and she is determined to clear her husband's name over it, working against the grain of an institution that would rather the whole business quietly went away. It is a reminder that for all the committee rooms, this is a show about people whose family lives keep colliding with their jobs.

The two stories never quite meet, and that feels right. Some messes are departmental, some personal, and both of them land on the same desk. Stafford's interception makes a fine scandal; Anne's fight makes a quieter one, and the quieter one is the more painful to watch.

Jeffrey Caine wrote it and Brian Farnham directed. Karen Archer carries the emotional weight as Anne, with Tim Pigott-Smith's Stafford as the cause of most of the trouble. Stephen Tate's Det. Supt. Brian Kale and Eamon Boland's Det. Chief Supt. Jim Gray keep the professional end moving, while Julian Holloway's Sir Ian Harnett MP does the political hovering. Judy Loe's Dr Elizabeth Stafford, Erin Geraghty's Fiona and Ross Livingstone's Tim Stafford fill in the family corners, with Roger Winslet's Sgt. Macklin and Jamie Ripman's detective constable on the procedural side.

But the episode belongs to Anne, and to the slow realisation that clearing a name is harder work than raising one. Nobody thanks her for it, and the show does not pretend otherwise. It is a quieter hour than the title promises, and all the better for it.