Short Story

Bobby Mulgrew, an Irish gangster with an eye for the main chance, wants to do a bank job on Danny's territory. But the job keeps slipping his mind, because Mulgrew is distracted by the relationship brewing between Jonjo O'Brady and Carol Kane. Whether he is watching them, or watching the clock, is hard to say. Mulgrew's bank job is the threat that never quite arrives, which suits an episode about distraction.

Into this arrives DCI Sarah Turnbull from Special Branch with a brief to catch Danny Kane. Special Branch coming after the club is a different weight of trouble than the local nick, and everyone adjusts accordingly. Turnbull is a different kind of copper from the ones who usually circle the club; she comes with files and purpose, and Danny treats her the way a man treats a debt he has not paid.

The Jonjo and Carol business is the warm spot in the middle. Two people in a dangerous line of work trying to keep something private, with the whole neighbourhood keeping score. Mulgrew's interest in them is the joke: the man planning a robbery cannot stop rubbernecking at a courtship.

The police presence thickens around the edges, with DCS Graham, DS Fielding, DI Fairweather and DC Milligan in the usual spots, while Frank watches his brother with the look of a man who has seen this film before.

Murray Smith wrote it, Richard Standeven directed. Don Henderson, Leslie Grantham, Caroline Bliss and Barbara Wilshere lead, with Peter Gowen, Leon Herbert, Frederick Warder, Nigel Harrison, James Saxon and Pete Lee-Wilson in support.

Short Story is the title and the warning. Nothing here runs long enough to become a saga, and that restraint is the appeal. It ends with everything still in motion, which feels honest. It is an episode about waiting, in the best sense: everybody is waiting for somebody else to move, and the hour enjoys the waiting.