Sins of the Fathers (2)

The second half finds Danny acting well out of character, working alongside Jason Philpott, the far-right thug whose people killed Nick. Whatever the arrangement is, it sits badly with everyone who knows him, and Frank most of all. Danny is not the sort to work for anyone willingly, so whatever Philpott has on him must be good, and the episode doles the arrangement out in pieces.

Frank does the legwork. He discovers where Special Branch keep the footage they hold on Danny, and that discovery sets the departments at each other's throats. The Flying Squad decide they are done watching; they want to undermine the Branch and arrest Danny themselves. The episode becomes a fight between police factions with Danny as the prize nobody should want.

But the people chasing Danny are as much a threat as the people he is hiding from, and the episode knows it. Trust is in short supply, and everyone is working their own angle. Philpott's politics are the ugly backdrop, and the show uses them without ever letting them take over the hour.

The Flying Squad versus Special Branch business is the episode's real subject. Two arms of the same machine trying to pull each other down, with the Kanes caught between. It is a rare outing where the villains are almost an afterthought.

Murray Smith wrote it, Gabrielle Beaumont directed. Leslie Grantham's Danny, Don Henderson's Frank, Caroline Bliss's Turnbull and Barbara Wilshere's Carol lead, with Leon Herbert, Peter Gowen, Frederick Warder, Nigel Harrison, Pete Lee-Wilson and Thomas Craig in support.

Sins of the Fathers finishes the story on its own terms, and the title earns its plural: everybody in this one is paying for somebody else's choices. The ending does not pretend the problem is solved; it just stops, with everyone back where they started and a little less sure of the rules.