Sudden Death Tango

Three stories share the hour, and they interlock without ever quite colliding. Betty McGhee asks Frank to use his influence on Danny to keep her son Chas out of a life of crime, the sort of request only a priest gets. DI Rosy Campbell takes a professional interest in the murder of Walter Trafficante, a case with more questions than leads. And Peter Noonan, never one to sit still, is planning a gem raid.

Frank's part is the family one. He leaves the preaching for Sundays. He sorts things out, or tries to. Chas is a decent lad heading the wrong way, and Betty's request lands on Frank at a moment when he is already carrying Danny's business on his back. She is asking him to save her son from the life his own family runs, and he cannot quite say no.

The raid and the murder investigation pull everyone else into a familiar dance, with DS Fielding and DI Fairweather keeping the pressure visible and Jonjo O'Brady and Polish Joe moving through the edges of it. The gem raid is the wild card, the one plan nobody has a handle on. The episode's best trick is how small it keeps everything. Nobody announces a war; people just make requests and follow leads.

Murray Smith wrote it, Anthony Wilkinson directed. Don Henderson and Leslie Grantham head the cast as the brothers, with Kitty Aldridge as Rosy Campbell, Barbara Wilshere as Carol, Philip Martin Brown as Noonan, Leon Herbert as Polish Joe, Peter Gowen as Jonjo O'Brady, Nigel Harrison as Fielding, Ian Lindsay as DCS Torrance and James Saxon as Fairweather.

Sudden Death Tango is a solid mid-season outing, the kind of episode that keeps the plates spinning without dropping any. The tango of the title suits it: a lot of stepping around each other, and somebody eventually falls. The three strands rarely meet, and that is fine, because they share a rhythm.