Something Blue

Two cases come at Maggie this week, and the more awkward one isn't the one with a case number. She finds pornographic magazines in Steven's bedroom, then overhears him telling his school friends about the 'dirty' movie they've watched. Every parent of a teenage boy will recognise the moment: you can either have the conversation or pretend you never opened that drawer, and neither option feels right. Nigel Rathbone's Steven, meanwhile, is doing what teenage boys do and hoping his mother won't notice, which she has.

But the actual police work is a shoplifting operation run on Fagin lines, with young girls doing the lifting for a man who stays out of sight. Judith Lloyd's Sue Williams and Linda Robson's Chris Adams are the girls at the sharp end of it, and the episode treats them as victims rather than villains. Lynda La Plante, who would go on to create Prime Suspect, turns up as Juanita Shervington. The shoplifting ring is the kind of case the show does well: small-scale, human, with no easy heroes.

Tony Hoare and Terence Feely wrote the script, John Reardon directed. Brian Gwaspari's Croft and Paul Moriarty's Barratt are in the squad too, and James Ottaway's George Taylor grumbles and is right, as usual.

The two strands aren't really separate. The shoplifting gang exploits girls who don't know any better; at home, Maggie watches her own son drift towards exactly that sort of knowing. The show doesn't hammer the connection, which is why it works. It just lets the two versions of the same worry sit in the same hour.

Derek Thompson's Fenton and the rest of the squad handle the legwork around the shoplifting ring. The domestic dilemma, at least, gets no tidy bow, which is the honest way to handle it. Some cases get closed. The ones at home tend to stay open.