Company of Strangers

Three crack addicts are knocking over banks and building societies, and the motive is blunt: debt. They owe a gangster, and every raid is another instalment. DC Alan Oxford runs the case, and his best lead is an informant called Marcus, a man already living on borrowed time from the moment his name gets whispered in the wrong company. The squad has chased worse crews, and for a while this one looks small-time: desperate men, bad planning, easy money. Then the money stops mattering.

The informant's murder is where the episode turns. The robbers, meanwhile, decide they have had enough of repaying anyone and turn on their own boss, and the violence stops being orderly. And in the middle of it DS Bob Tate, impulsive as ever, rushes into a confrontation alone and unarmed, which is either brave or stupid depending on your view of him. The episode clearly has a view. Nobody is close enough to pull him back, and nobody has time to argue.

Brendan J. Cassin and Roy Mitchell wrote it, Terry Winsor directed, and it first aired on 1 February 1996. The regulars are all here: Reece Dinsdale's Scott, Lynda Steadman's Helen Ash, Robert Willox's Ted Donachie, Pooky Quesnel's Grace Harris and David Sterne's Frank Uttley, with Gary McDonald's Oxford, whose investigation sets the whole sorry chain in motion. Michelle Joseph plays Bryony Oxford, George Jackos plays Yannis Constantine, and Sylvester Williams plays Johnny Hudson.

Company of Strangers is a tight, grim little hour. The building society jobs are the least of it; the real subject is what debt does to people, and an informant whose trust in the police costs him everything. Tate's unarmed rush is the sort of decision that gets coppers killed, and the show is honest enough not to pretend otherwise. It is not a flashy episode. It does not need to be.