Blood Sports

Politics arrives on horseback. Francisco Cabreras, the teenage son of the president of San Ibrez, is shot dead while playing polo, and the killers are members of a terrorist group opposed to his father. The murder lands in CI5's lap because the family is in London, which leaves them guarding the obvious next target: Anita, Francisco's step-sister.

An eye-witness puts the killers' car in the frame, and the case starts moving. Then Doyle turns up a complication that makes the job much nastier. Anita is dating one of the terrorists, without knowing what he does for a living. She agrees to help bring him in, and the clock starts ticking toward the gang's next move, planned for a golf course. CI5 now have two jobs at once: protect the next target and persuade Anita to set up the man she thought she knew. The hunt jumps from one rich man's sport to another.

Brian Clemens and Gerry O'Hara wrote it, Phil Meheux directed. Michelle Newell is Anita, and she is asked to do a lot: feisty enough to be believable, vulnerable enough to be in real danger. Yves Beneyton is Rene Lacoste, Michael Griffiths is Captain Hidalgo, Harry Towb is Harry Spence, Oliver Smith is the Killer, Elizabeth Spender is Helen Tippett and Ruby Wax is Lonnie.

The polo setting is the kind of detail the show enjoyed, rich people's sports turned into killing grounds, and the golf course finale keeps the same idea running. The personal twist, a girl unknowingly dating the man who helped kill her brother, gives the protection story a nasty edge that a straightforward manhunt would not have had.

It is a straightforward thriller with a sharp hook in the middle, and it does exactly what it sets out to do, which is more than many fancier episodes manage.