Walk Home

Two kinds of trouble this week. A hitchhiker is snatched and the abduction turns into a siege, which gives Stafford the kind of live operation that eats the whole day. The hitchhiker's name matters less than the waiting, and the episode understands that. Meanwhile Anne Stewart is dealing with something quieter and just as corrosive: security guards on a private estate who have decided the law is theirs to run.

The two stories sit well together because they are both about control. Stafford is trying to take charge of a situation that is slipping away, and Anne is trying to pull back men who have already gone past the point of listening. Neither fight is pretty, and the episode does not tidy either of them up. The kidnapping story gets the urgency; the estate story gets the discomfort, and the balance holds. The guards think they are helping, which makes them harder to stop than straightforward villains. Each story is doing the other's work, which is the neatest thing about the episode.

Jeffrey Caine and Peter Jukes wrote it, Desmond Davis directed. Tim Pigott-Smith's Stafford runs the siege end while Karen Archer's Anne fights her own battle, with Judy Loe's Dr Elizabeth Stafford and Tony Caunter's Arthur Quine moving through both worlds. Roger Lloyd Pack's Kenneth Rudyard and Ricky McDonagh's Gary Leonard give the siege its human edge, and T.P. McKenna's Colin Fowler keeps the politics warm. David Cardy's Martin Stewart, Michael Cochrane's Nigel Crimmond and Rowena Cooper's Cllr. Morpeth round out the ranks.

The episode is not one of the show's flashiest, but it is a good example of what The Chief does well: two ordinary-looking problems, neither of which has a clean answer. And that is the job, really. Walking home from it is the hard part. There are no fireworks, and the show clearly thinks none are needed.