Wild Justice

Bodie's training starts going backwards, and the reason is a motorcycle gang. He has got an obsession with the Hell's Angels outfit run by King Billy, and it is eating into his work badly enough that Cowley packs him off to a lady psychiatrist. The obvious reading is that the golden boy of CI5 is cracking up, and for a while the episode is happy to let that idea stand.

The obvious reading is wrong. King Billy's gang killed one of Bodie's friends, and the obsession is really a hunt. There is method in the madness, and the episode enjoys watching everyone else slowly work that out while Bodie keeps his own counsel. The question is whether he stays one step ahead of the gang or one step off the edge, and the show keeps that doubt alive through every scene.

Sarah Douglas plays Dr. Kate Ross, and it is a nice bit of casting: she had already done Superman, and she brings the right brisk authority to a woman who has to decide whether her patient is ill or just angry. Brian Clemens and Ranald Graham wrote it, Dennis Abey directed. Larry Lamb is Jack Craine, Jenny Twigge is Sally, Trevor Byfield is King Billy, Marsha Fitzalan is Jennifer Black, Frances Low is Cheryl and Paul Humpoletz is D.C.I. Botham.

The revenge plot gives Lewis Collins something meatier than usual, and he handles it well, letting the hardness crack just enough to show the grief underneath. Doyle and Cowley watch from the sidelines, worried and increasingly out of step with whatever Bodie is actually planning, which keeps the rest of the team honest.

It is the kind of episode that works because you are never quite sure whether Bodie knows exactly what he is doing, or has simply stopped caring.