The Great Escape

Crack cocaine arrives in Eastland and the community does what frightened communities do: it organises. Vigilante groups start patrolling, and Stafford is left with the thankless task of calming people who have decided the police are not doing their job.

The episode is sharpest when it refuses to sneer at the vigilantes. The anger on the estates is real, and the police response has to be about more than arrests. Stafford has to keep order without alienating the very people who feel abandoned, which is the kind of balancing act this show enjoys stretching. He cannot move against the patrols without arresting the neighbours, and turning a blind eye means sanctioning a private army. There is no soft option, which is exactly where the show likes him. The drug itself does most of the talking; the patrols are the answer nobody asked for.

The hour keeps the scale small, and that suits the subject. Crack arrives street by street, and so does the fear that follows it. The cast list runs deep because the story lives on the estate, not in the incident room.

Jeffrey Caine wrote it, Brian Farnham directed. Tim Pigott-Smith's Stafford works the room alongside Karen Archer's Anne Stewart and Tony Caunter's Arthur Quine, with Colin McCormack's Peter Leech close by. Eamon Boland's Jim Gray keeps the professional thread honest, while the estate end is well served by Desmond McNamara's Terry Salter, Ewart James Walters' Winston Daniels and Steve Whyment's Kevin Bebb, with Carol Harrison's Shirley Salter giving the story a family face and Erin Geraghty's Fiona doing her usual rounds.

The title is the joke: there is no great escape here, only a slow negotiation with a problem that will not be solved in one hour. But the episode earns its keep by taking the vigilantes seriously. It is easy to write them off, and harder to police them, and the show keeps both of those jobs in view.