No Stone

A group of well-off young people declares war on the law. Their leader is Ulrike Herzl, PLO-trained and ferocious, convinced the British justice system is rotten to the core. The war takes the form of bombs planted around London's legal establishments and the murder of members of the judiciary, and for a while the city has no idea who's behind any of it. They're young and angry, and they've decided that the system which raised them is the enemy, which makes them harder to catch than any gang.

The break comes when Jimmy Kilpin, one of their own, gets caught. His offer to reveal the group's arms dump is a death sentence. The gang kills him, and they kill the CI5 operative who was with him, which turns the case personal. Bodie and Doyle capture Herzl, and then the real work starts. The group has planted a bomb designed to blow up a court-house, and the only person who knows where is the woman who'd rather see it go off than talk. But getting her to talk without letting her know she's being played becomes the whole game, and the hour counts every minute of it.

Brian Clemens and Roger Marshall wrote it, Chris Burt directed. Sarah Neville's Herzl is the best kind of fanatic, smart enough that every lie the boys tell her has to be a good one. John Wheatley's Jimmy Kilpin, Philip York's Hockley, Godfrey James's Ross Kilpin, Briony McRoberts's Tessa Kilpin, Philip Martin Brown's Cook and Chrissie Cotterill's June Cook make up the cell and its edges. Brown, later a familiar face in a school staffroom, plays against type nicely here.

It's the kind of episode the series does when it wants to be serious, and the courthouse bomb gives the hour real weight. Herzl cannot be talked around, and the last scenes make clear that this is one battle, not the war.