"Four and Twenty Blackbirds"

A visiting Italian judge is shot at, and suddenly the whole of Eastland has an international problem. Cade's own life is put in jeopardy by the fallout, which is this show's way of saying the top job carries no immunity. Bruce Myers's Pietro Donati moves through the episode with the weight of a man who knows more than he says, and the Dudgeons, Chris Hargreaves's Ian and Kate McLoughlin's Lisa, are tangled up in his orbit. The attack is a single moment of violence; the aftermath is where the episode lives. For a show set firmly on home turf, the sudden international colour is a change of air. The Dudgeons hover on the edges of the case, and the episode is in no hurry to explain them.

Karen Archer's ACC Anne Stewart and Stuart McGugan's Det. Chief Supt. Sean McCloud run the investigation with John McArdle's Det. Con. Dave Corbyn, the sort of solid, unflashy detective the show quietly relies on. Hugh Quarshie's Vincent Pierce, Maryann Turner's Mrs O'Callaghan and Joe Alessi's Enzo Odone fill out the guest list, and Martin Shaw's Cade is rarely out of the frame. The judge's business is never fully spelled out, and the vagueness works in the episode's favour.

Jeffrey Caine and Peter Jukes wrote it, Roger Gartland directed. The writing team by this point has the show's rhythms down cold.

The title is nursery rhyme mischief, borrowed from the pie full of birds, and the episode plays the same trick: the innocent little frame hides something that wants out. It is a solid hour of the show doing what it does best, letting a foreign threat land on local ground and watching the locals cope. The Italian flavour is mostly atmosphere, but the tension is pure Eastland. The threat gets contained and the force is left holding its breath. It is a sturdy, professional hour, the television equivalent of a solid away win. Nothing about the judge's fate is resolved neatly, which is the right call for material like this.