Mixed Doubles

President Parsali is coming to London to sign a peace treaty, and Bodie and Doyle are put through their paces as his bodyguards. It is the usual drill, intensive training for a job that should be routine, until the pair realise they are not the only ones learning the ropes. An international hitman called Rio has arrived in town to arrange the assassination, and he has hired two local English lads to do the actual killing. The peace treaty is the prize both sides are playing for, which raises the stakes well beyond a single man's life.

The two hired killers are going through their own training, learning the same moves the Professionals are practising, and the paths cross in ways that make everyone uncomfortable. The show enjoys the symmetry: two pairs of men, taught the same skills and pointed at each other, with only the paymasters telling them apart. The trainees even nurse the same ambitions, which is the point the title is making.

Brian Clemens wrote it, Roger Tucker directed. Michael Coles is Rio, and he is the kind of continental menace the show did well. Ian McCulloch is Macklin, David Beames is Coney, Nickolas Grace is Joe, Paul Herzberg is Serpoy, Bill McGuirk is Callard and Lesley Daine is the Barmaid.

The training ground scenes are the heart of it, watching the two sides sweat through the same exercises and size each other up without quite knowing it. It is a neat idea, well played: a bodyguard and an assassin are really the same man with different instructions, and the difference between them is a matter of who signed the cheque. The episode trusts the audience to spot the parallels without having them spelled out, which is the mark of a confident script.

A well-constructed hour that keeps its tension in the gaps between the two teams.