Dabbling (2)

The second part of Dabbling picks up where the first left off, and the seams start to show. The escort-agency inquiry is still live, but P.C. Dougie Raymond has taken his interest in the women he is supposed to be investigating to a personal level. That is a bad mistake at the best of times, and here it threatens the whole operation while putting his colleague Cheryl Hutchins in harm's way. Raymond's foolishness is the kind the squad can least afford, because it hands the suspects a lever they did not have before.

And Chappel has a second fire to fight. A new life peer is being blackmailed, and the trail leads him toward whoever is feeding damaging information about Lord Buller and his circle. The two threads are separate on paper but share the same nagging problem: someone close to the investigation is leaking, and Chappel has to find the source before the case collapses entirely. The episode is built on that doubling, the professional mess at home set against the political one in public.

J.C. Wilsher wrote it and David Thacker directed. Ken Stott is Chappel, with Caroline Catz's Hutchins and Marc Warren's Raymond at the centre of the trouble. Anna Chancellor's Dr. Christina Weir, Garry Cooper's Supt. Jeff Callard and David Harewood's Sgt. Joe Robinson fill out the squad, while Corin Redgrave's Lord Buller, Philip Jackson's Nigel Wingrove, and Sonya Walger and Siobhan Burke as Emma and Amy populate the wider cast.

The pleasure here is watching Chappel hold a line that keeps slipping. The Vice is good at showing how a clean investigation sours the moment an officer stops trusting his own judgement, and Raymond's lapse gives the hour its teeth. I thought this the stronger of the two parts, if only because the stakes finally feel personal.