Take Care

Mad cow disease is a strange subject for a police drama, and that is exactly why this episode works. Stafford has to decide whether to allow the screening of a documentary about BSE, and the decision pulls him into the no-man's-land between public information and public panic. Let the film run and he is scaremongering; stopping it means he is hiding something. There is no version of the call that leaves him clean. The screening is not a police matter on paper, which is exactly why it lands on his desk.

Anne Stewart gets into hot water along the way, which will not surprise anyone who has been watching her run. The episode is a reminder that the top of the force is not about raids and handcuffs. It is about managing what people believe, and doing it without anyone quite noticing the management. The BSE question is a gift to a drama about command, because there is no right answer, only a decision that will be judged later.

Jeffrey Caine wrote it, Desmond Davis directed. Tim Pigott-Smith's Stafford carries the argument, with Karen Archer's Anne catching the heat beside him and Judy Loe's Dr Elizabeth Stafford bringing the medical view to the table. Tony Caunter's Arthur Quine, Kika Markham's Billie Keenan, Charles Collingwood's Sir Edward Caveret and Tim Wylton's Simon Enning push the decision from their own corners, with Michael Cochrane's Nigel Crimmond, Geoffrey Bateman's Commissaire Toulin and Ross Livingstone's Tim Stafford in support.

The episode is a slow burn, and it knows it. There is no body on a slab, just a question sitting on the chief constable's desk. The hour makes the unglamorous point that leadership is mostly paperwork with consequences. And that question, as the hour makes clear, is the dangerous one. Nobody will thank him either way, which the hour treats as the price of the job.