Down To You, Brother

A stag party is where it starts, which is fitting, because the whole episode is about men staking claims on women they do not own. Regan bumps into Raymond Meadows, a well-to-do ex-criminal who gets drunk enough to admit that his wealth came from a robbery Regan once let him go for, lack of evidence being what it was. Raymond is a widower with a daughter, Debbie, and he does not like her boyfriend, a flash villain called Dougie Owen. Regan suspects the old man is using him to put Owen away. He is not wrong, and he is also not the only one being used.

Owen plays straight into everyone's hands by making Debbie the unwitting pawn of a robbery. But the episode's real cleverness is in the geometry: father, daughter, copper and villain, each using the others, nobody quite in control. And nobody, in the end, gets exactly what they wanted.

Derek Francis gives Raymond the polished surface of a man who has laundered his past along with his money, and Terence Budd's Owen is all swagger and short sight. Tina Heath's Debbie is the one person in the story who is not playing. Kenny Lynch's Roland Holder adds a lighter touch to the squad scenes, Malcolm Tierney, Ron Pember and John Barrard fill out the edges, and Morgan's Haskins does his usual turn as the man who will have to explain it all to the Commissioner.

Richard Harris and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, and Christopher Menaul directs with a steady hand. Thaw and Waterman anchor the hour as ever, Carter at Regan's elbow through every twist.

It is a story about old scores and new cons, and the title is a promise kept: when the dust settles, the responsibility lands somewhere nobody expected. The stag party frame is the giveaway. Men make claims, women pay for them, and the Sweeney just has to clear up the mess.