Widows: Episode 5

The raid itself goes almost too well. Linda has sorted the van, the plan is ready, and on the day the security van job runs smoothly right up to the getaway, when Shirley twists her ankle legging it from the scene. That one injury is what unravels everything. Dolly finds her struggling to start her car, takes her back to the house, and for a few minutes the two of them are safe. Then the police arrive and take Dolly to the station to look at photographs.

It is the worst possible moment for Eddie Rawlins to turn up, and he does. Shirley attacks him, there is a struggle, and the dog gets it. Dolly comes home to a dead animal and a house that is no longer safe. But the grief is real, the kind the show doesn't usually stop for. She buries it long enough to stash the money in the top of the new lockers at the convent and to get them both moving. Then Shirley recognises someone in a photograph, and Dolly finally says it out loud: Harry is alive.

Ann Mitchell's Dolly carries most of the weight here, with Fiona Hendley's Shirley doing the heavy scene and Maureen O'Farrell and Eva Mottley as Linda and Bella. David Calder is D.I. Resnick, Paul Jesson D.S. Fuller, with Stanley Meadows's Eddie, Kate Williams's Audrey Withey, Terry Stuart as Terry Miller and Maurice O'Connell as Harry Rawlins. Lynda La Plante wrote it, Ian Toynton directed.

The dog is the thing you remember. A show about robbery and revenge stops for a dead pet, and it works, because Dolly's devastation is the first time her guard is properly down. It is also the moment the truth about Harry stops being a rumour and starts being a fact, and the next episode has a lot to answer for.