Deathwatch (2)

Part two picks up the twelve victims and runs at the history rather than away from it. The inquiries into Harry Newman's past keep pointing at one place: the trial and execution of a well-known gangster, a case where the verdict looks less reliable every time someone pulls a thread.

Into this walks Frank Sutton, an expatriate gangster back on British soil with an agenda. His brother Charles was framed and hanged for murder, and Sutton means to prove it in public. He recruits Graham Barker, a reporter, and sets him gathering enough evidence to publish the truth about what happened all those years ago. It's a neat inversion for a cold case drama: the squad is hardly the only party investigating now, and their new rival has money, motive and no interest in procedure. Ronald Pickup plays Sutton with just the right blend of grief and menace, and William Armstrong's Barker is caught between a scoop and a very dangerous employer.

The police work carries on alongside, all of it tangled up with corruption that goes back decades. Boyd and the team have to work out how many of the twelve deaths feed into the old scandal, and who is still alive and powerful enough to care about keeping it buried. The show's fondness for historical injustice gets full expression here; the hanging itself becomes almost the least of it, with everything done since to protect the lie taking centre stage.

Stephen Davis and Barbara Machin wrote it, Maurice Phillips directed. Trevor Eve leads as Boyd with Sue Johnston, Holly Aird, Claire Goose and Wil Johnson behind him. The guests are a treat: David Hemmings as Malcolm Finlay, Warren Mitchell as Edgar Truelove, Pickup and Armstrong, plus David de Keyser as Marcus Freeman.

A satisfying close to the pair. The team gets its man-shaped answers, but the episode's real subject is how long a frame-up can survive when everyone respectable has a reason not to look too hard.