Life Sentence (2)

The awkward arrangement from part one continues: Boyd and his squad still need Thomas Rice, a serial killer serving a life sentence, to help them catch whoever is copying his work. Nobody enjoys this. The research notes use the word "begrudgingly" and it fits, because every conversation with Rice is a transaction the police would rather not be making.

The complication this time is that Rice may not be working alone. Someone on the outside seems to be helping him, which turns an already strange case into something stranger. If the Gambler has an accomplice still at large, then the copycat killing might have roots that go back further than anyone assumed. So Boyd goes to Clare Delaney, one of Rice's intended victims, and asks her to revisit her captivity. The question underneath it all is a bleak one. Why did he spare her? Susannah Harker plays these scenes with a lovely stillness; Delaney agrees to dig through the worst thing that ever happened to her because the alternative is worse.

Meanwhile the team runs its cat-and-mouse with Rice, trying to learn who his old accomplice was while keeping pace with the current attacker and keeping Delaney safe from a repeat of her ordeal. Three jobs at once, all of them urgent, none of them compatible. It makes for taut television, the kind where you notice everyone in the squad room is a bit more tired than they were last week.

Barbara Machin and John Milne wrote it, Edward Bennett directed again. Trevor Eve leads as Boyd, with Sue Johnston's Grace Foley, Holly Aird's Frankie Wharton, Claire Goose's Amelia Silver, Wil Johnson's Spencer Jordan, Samuel West as Rice, plus Mark Aiken, Paterson Joseph and Simon Gregor.

Two-parters live or die on their second half, and this one earns its conclusion by making the cost visible. The team gets its answers, but getting them means leaning on a man who enjoys being leaned on, and the show is honest about what that does to everyone involved.