Well, I thought this episode was just blindingly good, but if it was like this every week, we’d have shelved it because our kid would be completely lost every week. This time, the remarkably weird crime leads Department S into a very complex story about spies and double agents. The complexity comes by the way the story is told, relying on hints and feelings and understandings that sometimes governments are going to very quietly do terrible things. It trusts that the viewers will be intelligent enough to see what has happened and what is going to happen, but unfortunately the nine year-olds in the audience will be left behind this time.
Also, the story introduces Basil Dignam as Smith, the head of the British Secret Service, who will return in the next episode, an uncommon example of a recurring character in an ITC series outside of the leads. If Stewart is still as mad at Smith as he is at the end of this installment, Smith may exit the next one with a black eye.
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