Episode 5

Episode five opens with Lana Washington doing something she would not normally do: breaking protocol. The reason is Alex. He has hit rock bottom, with nobody left to turn to, and she decides the rulebook can wait while she tries to reach him. It is a small human choice, and it sits badly against a day job spent hunting a terror cell that keeps slipping the team's grasp. Nobody says it out loud, but everyone in the room can feel the stakes rising.

That squeeze between the personal and the professional is where this episode does its best work. Lana's decision powers everything that follows. The surveillance, the careful moves around the cell, all of it carries the knowledge that she has already crossed a line and could be caught out. Writers Daniel Brierley and Amanda Duke keep that thread tight, and director Audrey Cooke knows when to hold a shot on McClure's face instead of spelling the feeling out in dialogue.

And then comes the shock discovery about the terror cell. The team finds something none of them expected, and the hour clicks up a gear. The build is patient enough that the reveal genuinely lands.

The regulars do steady work. McClure carries the weight of the broken rule, while Tomiwa Edun gives Alex a bruised dignity. Kevin Eldon's Jeff Washington hovers around the edges, never quite as peripheral as he looks. Bethan Cullinane's Hope, Kerry Godliman's Sonya Reeves, Nabil Elouahabi's Hassan Rahim, Tamzin Griffin's Val, Lewis Jamison's Josh, Dino Kelly's Mac and Os Leanse's Hugo fill out the ranks.

It is a quiet hour in a series that likes a big noise, and all the better for it. The small deviations from procedure, made by people who care rather than people working from the manual, tell you more about this team than any explosion could.