Episode 1

Lana Washington is back from secondment, and the first thing the new series does is give her a quiet day. She is due to give a routine talk to a group of security officers, the sort of task that should be the easy part of the job. But the episode is asking a pointed question from the start: after everything, is she ready to be back on active duty? The calm only lasts as long as the opening stretch, and no longer.

An explosion rocks the heart of the city, and the fragile routine shatters. Lana and everyone around her are thrown straight back into the chaos, and the operational machinery grinds into life. Commander John Francis (Julian Ovenden) is in charge, Nick Hood (Thom Ashley) and Shaun Hodge (Antony Byrne) are in the middle of the fallout, and the blast site pulls in a full cast: Hanson (Lee Colley), Fran (Zoe Goriely), CTSFO 2 (Anthony D'Arcy) and Danny (Eric Shango), with Hassan Rahim (Nabil Elouahabi) and John Hudson (Kris Hitchen) adding their own angles on the mess. The blast site becomes the new centre of gravity for everyone involved.

Simon Ashdown and Daniel Brierley wrote it, Jon East directed it. The writing partnership is new, and the tone lands somewhere between fresh and familiar. East keeps the blast scenes tight and the quiet scenes quieter. McClure anchors it all as Lana, carrying the weight of a woman being asked to prove she is still up to this.

It is a solid opening chapter. The show re-establishes the weight of operational procedure without slowing down, and it keeps the personal toll in view. Whether Lana is ready for active duty is a question the series will spend the next five hours answering, and this is a good place to start asking it.