Man Without a Past

A bomb goes off in the restaurant where Bodie is having dinner with his girlfriend, killing several diners and leaving her critically injured. His first assumption is the natural one: he was the target, and somebody has just tried very hard to kill him. The episode's best move is to let him be wrong. The real target was a quiet, unremarkable accountant at a nearby table, a man who was given a new identity after giving evidence against a gang of American mobsters. The blast is cruel in a way the show usually avoids: innocent people, a nice evening out, and then nothing.

That revelation changes the shape of the whole story. Bodie is no longer the victim; he is one of three parties racing to reach the accountant first, alongside the mobsters who want him dead and the FBI who want him safe. Doyle, puzzled and playing catch-up for most of the episode, is the audience's representative in the chase. There is a cold satisfaction in the idea that the accountant's whole life has been cancelled and rebuilt, and that even that was not enough to protect him.

Brian Clemens, Jeremy Burnham and Michael Armstrong wrote it, and the director was Martin Campbell, who would later steer GoldenEye and Casino Royale, so the action credentials here come as no surprise. John Carson is Brian Forrest, John Castle is Peter Crabbe, Rachel Herbert is Madge Forrest, Rod Culbertson is Arthur Pendle, Ed Bishop is Braddock, John Bay is Haskell and Deirdre Costello is Sally Pendle.

It is a story about a man who no longer exists, and about who gets to decide his fate. The shootouts are loud, but the identity at the centre of it is the quiet part, and it stays with you after the noise dies down.