Widows II: Episode 6

The police are taking their time about the raid, so Dolly and Bella decide to stop waiting. It is the sort of decision this series keeps making: when the men fumble, the women pick up the pieces. The job comes early, at a club full of staff and models, before anyone is ready for it.

Harry and his crew are in the middle of the robbery when it turns. Gunfire breaks out among his own men, and nobody understands that Harry means to sell them all out. Dolly manages a tense meeting with him in the middle of the mess. Bella and Dolly reach the lockup only to find the job already done. They rush to phone the police, race to the club, and find the gang already inside. So they go in themselves, hold up the staff and the models, and take the jewellery. It should not work. It mostly does.

Then Micky Tesco shoots Shirley Miller. She gets clear, he runs for it, and the chase through the streets ends when a lorry does the job their guns could not. Harry supplies the final shot. With the immediate danger over, Bella decides she has had enough and heads for Los Angeles. Dolly hides the diamonds and keeps a surprise in store for Harry, the kind he will not thank her for.

Lynda La Plante wrote it, Paul Annett directed it. Ann Mitchell's Dolly, Debby Bishop's Bella and Maurice O'Connell's Harry anchor the whole thing, with Fiona Hendley's Shirley taking the bullet and Andrew Kazamia's Micky Tesco running for it. Stephen Yardley's Vic Morgan, Kate Williams's Audrey Withey, Mike Felix's Eddie Bates, Paul Jesson's D.I. Alec Fuller and Jim Carter's D.I. Frinton fill out the trouble.

But even with two detectives officially on the case, the people who decide how the night lands are the ones inside the criminal orbit. Fuller and Frinton are still phoning it in when the last shot is fired. Bella is on a plane before the night is out. Dolly has the diamonds, and Harry has a surprise waiting that he will not enjoy. Everyone takes something home, which is more than most heist stories manage.