A Sudden Cause for Demonstration

Stafford is back, and the welcome is a series of bomb hoaxes from animal rights activists. Coming straight off a suspension, he is given exactly what he needs: an open-ended crisis with no easy way out and plenty of people watching how he handles it. The suspension is behind him now, and the job has not softened while he was away. The welcome mat has a tripwire in it.

The hoaxes are the point, in a way. Nobody knows which threat is real and which is a stunt, so the force has to treat every call seriously while the activists keep the pressure on. It is tedious, expensive work, the kind that wears a department down, and Stafford has to manage it with the political side of the job humming in the background. Nobody in the force sneers at the cause; it is the bombs they object to. The activists do not need a real bomb to tie up the force; they only need the fear of one.

Jeffrey Caine and Peter Jukes wrote it, Desmond Davis directed. Tim Pigott-Smith's Stafford is back in the chair with Karen Archer's Anne Stewart and Tony Caunter's Arthur Quine either side of him, and Judy Loe's Dr Elizabeth Stafford keeping the home front in view. Eamon Boland's Jim Gray is on the case floor, while Gary Waldhorn's Cllr. Alec Radcliffe, Nigel Cooke's Ian Williams, Stephen Hattersley's Captain Andrews, Sophie Thursfield's Sarah Bryant and Paul Brennen's PC Wheldon fill out the wider picture.

A fresh start for Stafford, then, but a busy one. The episode works as a reintroduction because it refuses to give him an easy win. And for a man who has just come back from a suspension, that is probably exactly the point. It is a patient hour, and the patience is deliberate.