Look After Annie

Annie Irvine is a charismatic evangelist of the far left, founder of the Workers-Christian Alliance, and she arrives back in England fresh from surviving an assassination attempt in Chicago. Cowley assigns Doyle and Bodie to look after her, which raises the eyebrows of both men, because Cowley, it turns out, is an old flame of hers. The idea of their boss having had a love life is a source of quiet, endless amusement to them, and the show lets them enjoy it. It is not often the series shows its boss with his guard down, and the men enjoy the sight far too much.

The protection job starts the way these jobs usually do. They detain a right-wing opponent of the Alliance and assume the threat has been dealt with, but the real danger is closer to Annie than any political enemy. Her own managers are more interested in the value of her martyrdom than in her safety, and the episode builds its threat from the people who are supposed to be on her side. When the danger finally comes, it does not arrive from the direction anyone was watching.

Brian Clemens wrote it and Charles Crichton directed. Diana Fairfax plays Annie with the right mixture of conviction and calculation, and the show is careful never to make her purely a victim. Clifton Jones is Stanley, Patricia Quinn is Isla, Derek Francis is John Howard, Keith Buckley is Ben Hymer, Nick Brimble is Big Billy and Frank Jarvis is Patterson. Crichton would go on to direct A Fish Called Wanda, which says something about his eye for people who talk a good game.

Annie gets out alive, but the episode ends with the understanding that something between her and her Georgie is finished. The show lets that sit without explaining it, which is the right call. Some relationships survive a bomb scare. This one does not.