Who's Afraid of Josie Tate?

The title borrows from Edward Albee, though the shouting here mostly stays off screen. 'Who's Afraid of Josie Tate?' is the series four finale, and it gives Maggie something close to a cause. Josie Tate, played by Paola Dionisotti, is a loyal wife whose husband Wally is in prison, and she will not accept that the evidence against him tells the whole story. She pushes, and Maggie ends up reviewing the case with fresh eyes. The title's question has a double edge: the woman everyone underestimates, and the case that will not behave.

The set-up could have been a formula, and a tired one at that. The episode earns its way past the formula by taking Josie seriously. Dionisotti gives her a ferocity that never tips into melodrama, and Ralph Bates, a man who spent a good chunk of the seventies in Hammer films, plays Wally with the right amount of buried menace. Ivor Roberts's Ch. Supt. Parnell hovers above the whole affair.

William Marlowe and Terence Feely wrote it, Gerry Mill directed, and it went out on 28 January 1983, closing out the season on a personal note. Maggie's professional judgement gets tangled up in a woman's determination, and the script lets the two sit together rather than pretending they are easy to separate. That is the episode's best move. The finale also gives the whole squad a last run-out before the cameras went away for the year, with Croft, Barratt, Phillips and Turnbull all earning their screen time.

It is a satisfying way to end the series' fourth run. The case is reviewed and the doubt is planted, and the season goes out on a question rather than an answer. But whether Josie was right, the episode leaves you to decide. For a series often dismissed as cosy, it is a surprisingly tough-minded closer.