The Time for Change

Stafford's new job as Head of Europol turns out to have a lot of free time in it, so the Home Office hands him one last piece of domestic work: an investigation into corruption inside the Metropolitan Police. It is the sort of assignment that follows a man around, and it brings him face to face with DAC Alan Cade, the man who looks very much like a successor. The corruption inquiry is the kind of job a man is given when he is too senior to refuse and too close to the door to be dangerous.

Anne Stewart has her own version of the same week. She is up for the promotion board for Deputy Chief Constable, and on the same day a gunman starts shooting in Burthorpe. She deals with the danger first and arrives late for the interview that might decide her career. Both claims on her time look legitimate, which makes the choice harder than any villain could. The episode does not even need to tell you which choice it thinks was right.

Jeffrey Caine and Peter Jukes wrote it, A.J. Quinn directed. Tim Pigott-Smith's Stafford is heading out the door with Karen Archer's Anne trying to move up behind him, and Martin Shaw's Alan Cade arrives with the kind of ease that makes everyone else look busy. Michael Cochrane's Nigel Crimmond, T.P. McKenna's Colin Fowler, Kate Binchy's Councillor Rosalind Maxwell and John Cater's Councillor Samuel Winstanley keep the county machinery turning, with Eamon Boland's Jim Gray, Stuart McGugan's Det. Supt. Sean McCloud and Malcolm Storry's DS Tom Jarrow on the working end.

The title is honest. Something is changing, and the hour is about watching the change arrive from two directions at once. But the lasting image is Anne, late for the interview, because she stopped to do the job.