One More Time

The episode is described, fairly, as Chappel's toughest assignment yet, and the description is not shy about why. He goes undercover as a lodger to build a case against a suspected porn merchant, moving into a house the way an ordinary man would, drinking tea and watching. The unremarkable routine is the whole point. Nobody looks twice at a quiet lodger. It is the oldest trick in the undercover book.

Hutchins is the one who finds out what the house actually is. While Chappel works the inside, she pulls the thread from outside and discovers the place is the base for a paedophile ring, which changes the shape of the case and the temperature of the hour in one move. But it is the moment the episode turns from careful police work into something much harder to watch.

The people inside the house are drawn without mercy. Colin Tierney's Martin and Lou Gish's Dawn are the sort of adults who make a living from other people's children, and Leah-Verity White's Kayleigh is the reason the show stops being clever about any of it. The Vice never soft-pedalled this material, and this episode does not either.

Ken Stott carries the discomfort of the lodger scenes without ever letting the mask slip on camera, and Caroline Catz's Hutchins gets the discovery scene that reframes everything. Rosie Marcel's Morgan, David Harewood's Robinson, Christopher Villiers's Archer, Zoe Thorne's Lauren and Damien Lyne's Tim Flynn complete a cast that treats the subject with the seriousness it needs.

Alison Hume, Rob Pursey and Barry Simner wrote it, Jon East directed. It is grim and unflinching, the kind of hour that made The Vice more than standard procedural fare. There is no comfort in the ending. The comfort, such as it is, lies in the show never pretending otherwise.