Hammer and Tongs

Anne Stewart loses the promotion she has been fighting for, and the disappointment sits on her all episode. It is the quiet thread running under the louder business of the Raglan estate, where a man phones a local radio show and threatens to set light to the area's young people unless something is done. That is the anti-social behaviour war, fought one broadcast at a time. Stewart's frustration is the sort of quiet loss the show specialises in, all the more painful for being invisible.

The violent thread is older and uglier. A veteran criminal breaks into a pensioner's home and the assault is brutal, and the only witness willing to stand against him comes under a campaign of intimidation. Cade sticks his neck out to keep her safe enough to testify, and the episode lets that cost him something it never quite prices up. The intimidation is patient and professional, the kind that never leaves bruises the camera can see.

Indra Ové's Stephanie Rink and Andy Serkis's Jacko Dolan give the estate side some teeth. Peter Woodward's Hale, Tom Mannion's Det. Insp. Glynn, Frank Baker's Dennis, Mark Drewry's Stock and Simon Slater's David Kendal work around them, and T.P. McKenna's Colin Fowler keeps the county machinery turning. Serkis, years before Middle-earth, makes Jacko a wheedling menace. The cast is a roll-call of faces British television would use for years, which is part of the show's charm.

Jeffrey Caine and Ray Jenkins wrote it, Roger Gartland directed.

But the episode belongs to Stewart. A show this good at institutional grime understands that missing a promotion can cut as deep as a beating, and Karen Archer plays it that way. The two halves never quite meet, which feels honest. Real forces run several emergencies at once, and the one that hurts most is rarely the one in the papers. The ending is not tidy. It does not need to be. It is not the show's showiest hour, but it may be its most tender.