The Proposition

It's a bold thing, a man like Spider Scott announcing he's going straight. He comes out of prison in the summer of 1976 with exactly that intention, and inside a week both the police and the intelligence services are circling him like dogs round a bone. DS George Bulman wants him back inside. Fairfax of British Intelligence has a different use for him entirely, and doesn't plan to ask his permission.

The job on offer arrives via a government Security Officer, and the small print is the usual sort: highly dangerous, well paid, and not really optional. Spider is being recruited whether he likes it or not, which puts a reforming burglar in the odd position of dodging the law he's trying to impress while running errands for a state he never wanted to work for. Fairfax, played with silky menace by Mark Dignam, is the kind of man who believes any means justify his ends, and Spider's means happen to be unique.

Bulman is the visible threat. Don Henderson gives him the weary patience of a man who has chased the same cat burglar for years and knows, with the certainty of a slow tide, that Spider will be back in his sights before long. Around the two of them the episode sets out its supporting cast: Vivienne McKee's Maggie Parsons, close to Spider and worried for him; Superintendent Cummings (Alan Rowe) and DC Derek Willis (Dennis Blanch) carrying the institutional weight of the force; John Welsh's Under Secretary studying the paperwork from a great height. Ray Lynch's Paul Freeman, Johnny Shannon's Warren and Leslie Schofield's Bluey Palmer fill out the edges of Spider's world.

Ken Grieve directs, with Ivor Marshall and Kenneth Royce sharing the writing credit. Stephen Yardley carries it as Spider, all quick hands and quiet watchfulness.

The proposition itself is fine dramatic engineering: a man offered freedom on terms he can't accept. And the first episode's real trick is making you feel how crowded the straight-and-narrow road is, every lane occupied by someone who wants a piece of him.