Home is the Place (2)

The second part stays inside the children's home, and the air turns sour fast. Chappel has come to suspect that a member of the staff is not merely turning a blind eye but is active in what is happening there. That suspicion sets off a frightening chain of events, and the episode stops being a rescue and becomes a hunt inside an institution that was supposed to protect the children in its care. Chappel trusts almost no one by the midpoint, and the camera stays close on his unease.

And the link is businesslike in the worst way. Chappel and Sgt. Joe Robinson trace a London pimp's connection to the home, where he uses the place as a hub to recruit child prostitutes. The horror here is procedural as much as moral: a building meant to be a sanctuary has been quietly bent into a supply line, and the squad has to dismantle it from within. Robinson keeps him steady, which is most of what saves the operation. Chappel, under the strain of it, seeks comfort in the bed of a colleague, a human slip that the show treats without judgement.

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

The episode is a bleak piece of work, and it knows it. The betrayal at its core is the institutional kind, the breach of a trust that was never meant to be tested. I found the colleague thread the most telling note: Chappel, usually so contained, letting the job crack him open just a little. That is the show at its most honest.