Trial & Retribution (1)

The first hour opens in the plainest possible way: a five-year-old girl goes missing, and the police fan out to search. The hunt does not last long. Her body is found inside a sewage pipe, and what began as a missing person inquiry turns into a murder investigation in the time it takes to make one phone call.

Detective Superintendent Michael Walker takes charge, with Detective Inspector Pat North at his side. David Hayman gives Walker a heavy, tired authority, a man who has seen enough of these cases to know how they tend to run. He moves through the early scenes like someone counting down to bad news. The leads are thin and grim. Officers knock on doors, chase names like David Polk and Derek Waugh, and slowly the net tightens around a suspect. By the end of the episode the case has left the police rooms behind and reached the courtroom, where the verdict is hammered out in front of the Clerk of Court and an usher who barely gets a line but earns his keep.

Lynda La Plante wrote it; Aisling Walsh directed. It first went out in October 1997, and it feels very much of its moment, in the best sense. The cast is full of faces you will recognise from a dozen other ITV dramas, which is part of the appeal. Stephen Critchlow's identification officer, Gerry Cowper's Ann Taylor, Scott Baker's workman: everyone behaves like real people doing a job rather than extras waiting for the camera.

What strikes you is how unshowy it all is. No fireworks, no sudden reversals. Just the slow, grinding machinery of an investigation and the people who keep it turning. That is the point, really. La Plante understands that justice is rarely a lightning bolt; it is paperwork and patience, with the occasional stroke of luck. And the show trusts the process enough to let it breathe.