Bring on the Cavalry

For £200, Barney Bailey makes a deathbed confession, and the price is exactly the problem. His dying words put Danny Kane in the frame for the 1979 Post Office robbery, and a dying man's word, however bought, is hard to unpick. The confession itself is a nasty little scene, a man selling his last words for pocket money. Danny offers no alibi. He will not explain himself, and Frank is left to fight the thing alone.

As if that were not enough, Colonel Mombassa arrives to lean on the territory. A drug baron moving into Kane ground is the kind of trouble that does not need the Post Office business on top of it, but that is the hand Frank is dealt. Frank, who came to the club in a dog collar, spends the episode being the only grown-up in the room, negotiating on two fronts while Danny sits tight and says nothing.

The double pressure makes the episode work. It is a story about a man who will not clear his own name, and the brother who has to try anyway. Danny's silence is the mystery at the centre, and the show is smart enough not to explain it away. There is something admirable in the way the hour keeps its focus on Frank; the priest half of the partnership rarely gets the running of the show, and this week he earns it.

Michael Aitkens and Murray Smith wrote it; Lawrence Gordon Clark directed. Don Henderson's Frank and Leslie Grantham's Danny anchor it, with Kitty Aldridge's Rosy Campbell, James Saxon's Fairweather, Barbara Wilshere's Carol, Leon Herbert's Polish Joe, Peter Gowen's Jonjo O'Brady, Frederick Warder's Graham, Nigel Harrison's Fielding and Pete Lee-Wilson's Milligan in support.

Bring on the Cavalry keeps its powder dry, and the title is a small joke. And the cavalry does show up, but it is wearing a dog collar.