Shadows

The new boss is DI Glenn Matteo, who has taken over the squad from Charlie Scott, and the first thing he inherits is a mess. Anna Dryden is desperate to prove herself as Acting DI and her plans keep coming unstuck. Then the robbery case lands, one with a racial angle that sets the whole area on edge, and the unit that's still grieving its old leader has to hold itself together in public. Nobody asked for a new leader so soon after losing the old one, and everyone is watching Matteo for signs of weakness.

But the case gets bigger than the crime. A robbery with racial undertones pulls the community in, the media sniff blood, and before long a troubleshooter is brought in to manage the press, which goes down about as well as you'd expect with the people who've been doing the actual work. Dryden watches her chances shrink with every headline. The robbery itself is almost secondary; the politics is the story, and the episode lets it arrive slowly.

Grant Masters's Matteo is the steady hand at the centre, a new boss who keeps his doubts off his face, while Bryan Marshall's DSI Don Roberts looms over the command structure. Simone Lahbib's Lucy McCarthy is the most interesting new face in the squad room. The supporting cast keeps the street end alive: Kofi Amankwah's Garry Parker, Courtney Dennie's Blowfish, Monty Fromant's Roller, Stewart Harwood's Lenny Cooke, Cornell John's Thomas Keyworth and Louis Mahoney's Colin Lessware.

David Joss Buckley and Roy Mitchell wrote it, Keith Boak directed, and the episode wears its tensions openly: the department arguing with itself while the case burns. It's a decent opener for a season that's changing its line-up, and the unease feels earned.

It went out in October 1997, and it leaves the authority question open: who really runs things when it all falls apart. The episode knows, but it isn't telling yet.