Home is the Place (1)

Series two opens on something sour. Chappel finds a young girl working the Soho streets, and the first job is simply to learn who she is. That question pulls him and Sgt. Joe Robinson north to Sheffield, where a children's home seems to be feeding girls into prostitution in London. The pattern is the sort that makes a vice cop feel small: not a ring to smash but a slow leak of vulnerable children that nobody upstream has bothered to stop. Chappel and Robinson work the home from the inside, and what they find points back to London with an ugly neatness.

And there is a softer current running through the hour. Chappel offers P.C. Cheryl Hutchins a roof over her head, a small domestic gesture from a man not known for them. It is the kind of detail that keeps the show human when the case turns grim, a reminder that these officers share a life off the street as well as on it. Hutchins, between cases, is the one who gets the benefit of it, and the arrangement says more about Chappel than any confession could.

Barry Simner wrote the opener and Roger Gartland directed. Ken Stott is Chappel, with David Harewood's Robinson and Caroline Catz's Hutchins at his side. Diane Parish plays Shirley Robinson, Marc Warren is Dougie Raymond, and James Hazeldine is Paul Mason. Eddie Marsan appears as Rhys, Freddie Annobil-Dodoo as Mikey Smith, Louise Goodall as Sgt. Alison Hanbury, and Carla Henry as Louise.

The episode is a difficult watch, and it does not pretend otherwise. Institutional failure sits at the centre of the story, and the police work feels like mopping up after a flood that was allowed to happen. I admired the restraint most: The Vice could have leaned on shock, but instead it lets the sadness of the situation do the work. That is the right call for a season opener.