Black Russian

Millions vanish from a safety deposit centre, and the arithmetic points one way: somebody on the inside helped. The crooked manager is the first name on the list, and behind him the trail leads to a Russian crew who want a piece of London's underworld. DS Anna Dryden is the one sent in after them.

Undercover work is the show's speciality, but this time it costs Dryden more than nerve. She goes in posing as a prostitute, working the same streets the gangsters use, and the case keeps rubbing against her own history. The demons she's been carrying surface at the worst moments, and the script trusts the audience to spot them without a monologue spelling them out. The squad watching her knows some of it. Not all of it.

Len Collin's script gives her room to carry that weight, and Alex Pillai directs with the usual briskness. The unit around her is solid, with Robert Willox's Donachie and Gary McDonald's Oxford doing their dependable work while David Sterne's Uttley holds the fort. Brendan Coyle's Bob 'Bingo' Tate and Reece Dinsdale's Charlie Scott drift through. It went out in November 1996. Ravil Isyanov's Demetri is a properly cold villain, and Robin McCallum's Jonathan Strickland is the kind of manager who keeps his collar straight while the vault empties. Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Anjelika Khromova give the Russian side some life.

The Russian mob storyline was everywhere on mid-nineties television, and Black Russian doesn't reinvent it. What it does well is keep the focus on Dryden, who is easier to care about than the gangsters. Dryden under pressure is the reason to watch. And the ending does her the favour of not pretending her problems are over; she has to carry them a little longer.

The robbery is solved and the crew goes down. Dryden's past is still there, which is the one part of the case nobody can wrap up, and the episode is honest enough to leave it that way.