Hungry Ghosts (2)

The Chinatown story reaches its sharp end here. The robberies are still running, and Charlie Scott decides the only way to close the case is to bait the trap himself. He talks New Scotland Yard into lending him a consignment of dummy weapons, guns that look real and shoot nothing, to lure the Big Circle gang in. It means risking his own career and, more to the point, Tate's life, and Tate agrees to it reluctantly, because he is the one already inside, and the only one who can see it through.

It nearly works. The trap closes and the pieces are in place, and then Chan Ming twigs that Tate is wired for sound. From there the sting stops being a plan and becomes a shoot-out, the bloody kind, and the episode does not flinch from it. Tate has been living inside this lie for two episodes, and now it has nowhere left to go. The quiet undercover business of part one ends here, in noise.

Steve Griffiths wrote it, Terry Winsor directed, and it first aired on 29 February 1996, completing the two-parter. Reece Dinsdale's Scott is the one betting everything, while Brendan Coyle's Tate pays for it. Tom Wu's Chan Ming makes a fine villain, sharp enough to smell the wire. David Yip's Jimmy Mak, Lynda Steadman's Ash, Robert Willox's Donachie, Gary McDonald's Oxford and Pooky Quesnel's Harris fill out the ranks, with Michael Attwell's Commissioner Weldon watching from on high and Glyn Grimstead's David Ash in support.

And the episode's best idea is the sting itself, a plan careful enough to deserve working, undone by one sharp-eyed man. Dummy guns are a lovely piece of police bluff, and watching it unravel is the point. The shoot-out is the bill for Scott's gamble, and the episode makes sure you know who is paying.