Déjà Vu

Frank McGrath is an armed robber with a grudge, and the grudge is against DI Charlie Scott. A case against him collapses, the trial ends with him walking free, and Scott knows the man well enough to know what happens next. He and Stephanie take the family to Cornwall anyway, hoping a holiday will put distance between them and the threat.

But the threat follows them. McGrath has decided the whole family pays for the detective's sins, and the squad back in London realises with a sick lurch that Scott's wife and child are standing in the open. Scott would rather face McGrath on his own than put the family in the firing line, and the script knows it and uses it. The race is on to find a man who moves faster than the paperwork.

Reece Dinsdale gives Scott the right mix of copper's hardness and family-man worry, and the episode leans into the domestic side more than most. The holiday scenes have the queasy feel of a safe house that isn't. David Threlfall's McGrath is properly chilling, the quiet kind of menace that doesn't need to raise its voice, and his scenes in court are the worst of the lot: you watch the verdict land and know he's already planning the next move.

Roy Mitchell wrote it, Colin Gregg directed, and the unit behind Scott is the familiar one: Brendan Coyle's Tate, Robert Willox's Donachie, Gary McDonald's Oxford, Pooky Quesnel's Grace Harris, David Sterne's Uttley and Amanda Pays's Dryden all circling the case. Kate McKenzie's Stephanie gets more to do than the standard worried wife, and Eleanor David's Rachel Chiles QC keeps the courtroom scenes honest.

It went out in November 1996, and the title earns its keep: everything Scott thought he'd left in the courtroom comes back at him in Cornwall. The episode is good at that, at making a family holiday feel like a trap, and the ending justifies the name on the tin.