Widows II: Episode 4

The episode moves on two tracks that keep threatening to touch. On one, Harry is putting his new team together for another robbery, and Dolly and Bella, looking for Dolly's book at the hideout, find out about it the hard way. Bella rents the lockup next door and watches the planning from close range. But on the other track, the personal one, Dolly and Vic Morgan are growing closer. He goes to the hospital to tell the injured D.I. Resnick what he has found; he calls on Dolly; he asks her out to lunch and waits long enough to overhear her crying.

Shirley gets the worst of it. Bella has to tell her that Linda is dead, and the news lands just as Micky Tesco is taking her out, down at Arnie Fisher's club, where Harry and Micky have talked their way into hosting a party. The club is a stage for the next job, and Shirley is on it without knowing.

The police side keeps moving too. They catch up with Sunny, the fence holding the money, which is the sort of quiet win that never stays quiet for long in this show, and the timing is about to matter.

Ann Mitchell's Dolly and Stephen Yardley's Vic Morgan are the heart of this one, with Fiona Hendley's Shirley, Debby Bishop's Bella, Maurice O'Connell's Harry, Andrew Kazamia's Micky Tesco, Kate Williams as Audrey Withey, Christopher Whitehouse, Mike Felix and Paul Jesson's D.I. Fuller in support. Lynda La Plante wrote it, Paul Annett directed.

What stays with you is Dolly crying where she thinks nobody can hear. Everything else in the episode is machinery: the lockup next door, the party at the club. That one moment of grief is the only real thing on offer, and it is the reason the heist planning never quite feels like a game.