The Purging of CI5

The season opens with CI5 under attack, and not in the usual glancing way. A bomb goes off inside the CI5 building and an operative is killed. Cowley takes a phone call promising more deaths to come, and the promise is kept, right up to an attempt on Bodie's life in broad daylight. Whoever is doing this knows exactly where to strike, and the panic spreads through the organisation like a slow leak.

The trail leads to an informant named Wakeman, which would wrap the case up neatly, except that Cowley insists he dealt with Wakeman years ago. That is the giveaway. This is an old score being settled, a grudge with deep roots, and the vendetta points somewhere far more personal than the files suggest. The final lead takes the team to a caravan, primed with explosives, waiting for the men who think they are closing in.

Brian Clemens and Stephen Lister wrote it, Dennis Abey directed. Gordon Jackson's Cowley, Martin Shaw's Doyle and Lewis Collins's Bodie anchor the hour, with Simon Rouse as Phillips, Sally Harrison as Susan, Norman Gregory as Lake, Christopher Fairbank as Billy, Ian Gelder as King, Paul Antony-Barber as Matheson and Ben Thomas as Williams.

What works is the paranoia. The threat is aimed at the whole machine rather than at individuals, and the show leans into the idea that nobody inside the building is safe, that CI5 itself has been marked down for destruction. But it is Bodie and Doyle's chase that keeps the pace up, and the pair are at their best when the odds are stacked against everything they work for. The episode never lets them catch their breath, and neither does it let the viewer.

A strong season opener, then. It promises trouble for the team that keeps paying off through the hour.