Lovesick (1)

Lovesick opens with a killer on the loose in London, and the targets are pimps. That puts Chappel in an odd spot: the Vice Squad is suddenly tasked with protecting the very men it normally pursues, because a murderer is thinning their ranks faster than the law ever could. The inversion is the episode's hook, and it gives the usual predator-and-prey arrangement a nasty spin. Chappel has spent years locking these men up, and now he is the one keeping them alive, which is a hard thing to swallow. Nobody on the squad relishes the assignment, but the dead are piling up and someone has to.

And the suspicion lands close to home. Sgt. Joe Robinson comes under scrutiny for the murder, which turns an already tense inquiry into something that tests the squad from inside. While all that runs, Chappel begins a relationship with the victim's mother. The show handles the awkwardness without winking, letting the personal and the professional tangle in a way that feels true to a man who lives inside his work. The victim's mother is not a footnote here; she is a person Chappel chooses to let in, complications and all.

Simon Tyrrell wrote it and Roger Gartland directed. Ken Stott is Chappel, with Caroline Catz's Hutchins and David Harewood's Robinson beside him. Diane Parish's Shirley Robinson and Valerie Edmond's D.I. Greer are on the case, and Denise Black plays Clare Cairns. The wider net includes Roland Manookian's Nathan Cairns, Emily Corrie's Layla, Justin Salinger's Curt, and Christopher Fox's Trevor Cairns.

What I liked is the quiet absurdity at the core. The Vice is at its best when it forces Chappel to defend people he would normally lock up, and the moral cramp that gives him is the most interesting thing here. Robinson under suspicion keeps the tension honest rather than tidy.