Faces From the Past

Frank's new local celebrity has side effects. His former bishop, Bishop Sykes, reaches out to keep tabs on him, and an old flame, Maggie Deverell, is back in his thoughts. But the past that matters this week is Jonjo's: a jailbird friend warns him that Albert Styles, a man best described as a headcase, is out and looking for revenge on Ma Kane.

The episode keeps both threads running, the rekindled romance and the looming threat, and the threat wins the hour. There is something quietly funny about Frank trying to attend to his personal life while a man with a grudge against his dead mother circles the neighbourhood. The bishop's call is the smallest of the threads, but it sets the tone: everybody wants something from Frank now that he is famous.

Styles is the best thing in it. Robin Summers plays him as a man with very little to lose and a fixed idea of how to get even, and every scene he is in pulls the air out of the room. The warning about him lands the way warnings about headcases always do: too late to change the plan, early enough to worry.

Jack Deverell and Miles Macey fill out the edges of the story, and DS Jack Nesbit keeps the police presence honest. Maggie's return gives Frank a reason to look forward, which makes the threat to the family's past land harder.

Russell Murray and Murray Smith wrote it, Derek Banham directed. Don Henderson's Frank, Leslie Grantham's Danny and Peter Gowen's Jonjo lead, with Leon Herbert's Polish Joe, Jack Galloway's Nesbit, Tony Selby's Jack Deverell, Celia Gregory's Maggie, David Ryall's Bishop Sykes, Robin Summers's Styles and Ged McKenna's Macey completing the cast.

Faces From the Past is a reminder that the Kanes never quite escape anything. The past does not visit; it moves back in.