Thou Shalt Not Kill

The day before the new term, a university branch of the National Mercian bank is robbed. Regan and the squad arrive fast enough to catch or shoot most of the gang. But two are still inside with the manager and two women hostages: Jimmy Wands, a known killer, and Barry Monk, his simpler sidekick. The bank is sealed, the guns are out, and the only question is who flinches first.

Haskins flinches. He hesitates in ordering the police marksmen to fire, and the hesitation costs lives. What follows is a car chase and fatalities. And the deaths hang over the whole operation, as they should. Regan, never one for keeping his mouth shut, rounds on his superior to his face. The episode is called "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and it spends its hour asking who the commandment applies to: the robbers, or the man who wouldn't give the order. It's the sort of episode that gets talked about in the pub afterwards, and not cheerfully.

It's a grim note on which to close the second series. The Sweeney could be noisy and cheerful; this one is neither. There's a coldness to the whole thing that the show usually traded for warmth. Ronald Lacey is a properly unnerving Barry Monk, all quiet menace, and Dean Harris plays Jimmy Wands with a cold stillness. Harriet Philpin is Julia Coulson, Olive McFarland is Mrs Dowland, Nick Brimble is Det. Con. Gerry Burtonshaw, Nicholas McArdle is Inspector Wilson, and Barrie Cookson appears as the Assistant Commissioner.

Ranald Graham and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Douglas Camfield directed. John Thaw, Dennis Waterman and Garfield Morgan all do some of their best work of the year, with Haskins carrying the weight of the episode's biggest mistake. The men with guns inside the bank are not the only ones who kill.