Damage

The title tells you where the damage is. Maggie Forbes's progress on a case grinds to a halt because something personal has got its hooks into her, and the episode is about what happens to a good detective when the machinery inside her own head jams. The case is still there, waiting, and so are the Appletons, the witnesses, the file on the desk. But Maggie can't get at any of it properly. Whatever has happened, the episode keeps it close, and the audience is left to read it in Maggie's face rather than in speeches.

It's a brave choice for a procedural to slow down this much. The hour gives its space to character, letting the people around Maggie react to her being off her game. Russell notices, and Steve does too. The rest of the squad treads carefully around her. Robert Longden's Pascoe and the Appletons (Mr and Mrs) hover at the edges, and the police work marks time while Maggie works on herself. The show refuses to spell the crisis out, letting the symptoms do the talking, and the mystery stays deliberately out of focus, which is the point. The case file stays open on the desk like an accusation, and the episode is brave enough to leave it there.

Peter Hammond and Terence Feely wrote it, Carol Wiseman directed. Jill Gascoine carries it as Maggie Forbes, with William Marlowe's Russell, Paul Moriarty's Barratt and James Ottaway's George Taylor around her. Robert Longden plays Pascoe, Peter Thistleton is Peter, Helen Cherry and Michael Lees play the Appletons, James Saxon is the constable and Nigel Rathbone plays Steve.

Not every episode of a crime series needs to be solved, and this one knows it. But it also knows the difference between an unfinished story and an abandoned one, and it walks that line with more care than most. It's a gamble, giving an hour of a crime series over to a detective's interior weather, and it pays off.