The Execution

Spider Scott's second outing for the government is a burglary with a long reach. Fairfax wants him inside the Chinese Legation to lift a photograph, the sort of picture that could bring a government down in the wrong hands. Spider gets in and out with the photo in his pocket. That's the easy part. The hard part is the street outside, where DS George Bulman has seen his face and is already closing in.

The rest of the episode is the bill coming due. Every job Spider does for Fairfax puts him deeper with the law he's trying to keep ahead of, and here the two threats finally meet: foreign agents who want the photograph back, and a detective who wants Spider himself. The result is a chase that barely pauses for breath. And for a man whose trade is silence and shadow, being spotted is the one failure he can't buy his way out of, and he knows it before we do.

Ivor Marshall and Kenneth Royce wrote it, Ken Grieve directed it, and the familiar faces settle in with the ease of a show finding its feet. Stephen Yardley's Spider is back, quick and watchful. Mark Dignam's Fairfax stays in the background, giving orders and taking credit. Paul Freeman's Ray Lynch, Dennis Blanch's Willis, Alan Rowe's Cummings and Don Henderson's Bulman all return, joined this week by Tania Rogers as Lucy Gonsalves, Roy Boyd as Brian and Peter Birrel as Groot. John Welsh's Under Secretary hovers over the paperwork, keeping the government's fingerprints off the job.

The look of it is proper mid-seventies chill, all grey stone and cautious men in raincoats. The Execution takes the opening episode's set-up and starts pulling the strings tighter, turning a recruitment story into a working relationship neither side quite controls. You can feel the rope Spider has agreed to wear, and it's already getting snugger.