Brand Loyalty (2)

The second half of the story wastes no time. Alan Oxford is unarmed, guarding Japanese witnesses with Lucy McCarthy, and the Mafia and the Yakuza have chosen this moment to settle their differences in a shootout around him. The witnesses are the prize, and Oxford is the only thing between them and the guns. He has nothing in his hands but the hope that nobody fires first.

But the squad races to him, and the map between where they are and where he is runs straight through the crossfire. Matteo, who has to find Takahashi before the mobsters do, starts burning bridges to get there, jeopardising relationships he'd rather keep. The episode puts its man in the worst possible place and then makes the journey to him the whole story.

Gary McDonald carries the danger well, playing a man in the middle of a gunfight with nothing to fight back with. The shootout around him has real chaos to it, the kind where luck matters as much as nerve. Simone Lahbib's McCarthy is alongside him for the worst of it, and the two of them hold the centre while the rest of the team fights through.

Rob Heyland and Roy Mitchell wrote it, David Innes Edwards directed, and it closes the Takahashi story with the expected fireworks. Grant Masters's Matteo takes the risks, while Amanda Pays's Dryden, Robert Willox's Donachie and Nicholas Ball's Hall push the pieces into place. Naoko Mori's Minako Takahashi and Syuichiro Ichimura's Eiji Takahashi keep the family stakes visible, and Raffaello Degruttola's Mario Volanta and Michelle Joseph's Briony Oxford round out the cast.

It went out in December 1997, and as a conclusion it does the job. The war blows up, the squad gets its people out, and the last act pays off the first part's promises. It's not subtle, and it doesn't need to be.