Widows II: Episode 1

Six months on, and the money has done what money does: split everyone up. Dolly is back in England having a facelift, of all the uses for a fortune. Shirley is packing for Los Angeles. Bella is engaged to a wealthy man, and only Linda seems stuck, drinking too much in Rio and letting it put the money and everyone's safety at risk. The old trouble is still ticking under all of it.

Harry comes back to Rio expecting to pick up his accounts and finds Dolly has emptied every one of them. She is not there, and neither is his money. From England she has hired a private investigator to watch Trudy Nunn, the woman Harry lived with before he left, which tells you exactly how much she trusts him.

The evening that breaks everything is a dinner out. Bella and her fiancé take Linda with them, and Linda, who cannot help herself, keeps dropping hints about Bella's past until Bella sends her home. Harry is nearby and hears it all. Linda, frightened for her life, tells him everything. And when Bella gets back, she finds Linda beaten up by the swimming pool.

Debby Bishop takes over as Bella, joining Ann Mitchell, Maureen O'Farrell and Fiona Hendley, with Maurice O'Connell's Harry back at the centre of it. Stephen Yardley's Vic Morgan, Peter Jonfield's Jimmy Glazier, Damien Thomas as José Camarena, Nuno Homem de Sá as Juan and Thelma Whiteley as Kathleen Resnick fill out the new world. Lynda La Plante wrote it, Paul Annett directed.

The episode's trick is making everyone look settled and then pulling the rug. Bella's engagement is a perch more than a fresh start; Linda's fear gets her beaten; and Harry, the man who was supposed to be dead, is suddenly the one person everyone has to answer to. Nobody is safe, least of all the people who thought they had got out.