Lovesick (2)

Lovesick (2) is the second half of a two-parter, though you do not need the first to feel the strain. Sergeant Joe Robinson's temper has been running hot, and a murder lands on his doorstep. To most of the squad he looks like the obvious man for it. DI Pat Chappel, who knows Robinson better than he should, is not convinced, and the episode follows him as he works the case from the other direction.

The pressure is personal. Chappel has a new relationship that is just getting going, and clearing Robinson means giving it up. That is the bargain the story sets him, and it is a nastier one than any confession would be. Around him the usual faces turn up: Cheryl Hutchins, Greer, Vaughan, and the Robinsons — Joe and his wife Shirley — along with Clare and Nathan Cairns, Layla, Curt. The suspicion spreads through all of them like a draft under a door.

What keeps it watchable is Stott. He plays Chappel as a man who would rather be anywhere else, yet keeps showing up because that is the job. And the murder mystery is tidy enough; the interest is in the cost of loyalty, how far a boss will go and what he will lose to back the colleague everyone else has written off. David Harewood gives Robinson a volatility that makes Chappel's faith look either brave or daft.

Simon Tyrrell wrote it and Roger Gartland directed. Stott leads, with Caroline Catz as Hutchins, Harewood as Robinson, Diane Parish as Shirley, Denise Black and Roland Manookian as the Cairnses, Valerie Edmond as Greer, Emily Corrie, Justin Salinger and Martin Stone as Vaughan.

It does not resolve with a tidy moral. Chappel gets Robinson off and pays for it in his own life. That feels right for a show that has never been sentimental about the price of doing the decent thing.