#derek conway

One of the all time classic comedy episodes and a great chance for the senior officers to stretch their legs a bit.

Jack and Derek are a fantastic comedy duo, though this is arguably more Derek's episode than Jack's. Both have been after promotion for a long time now, but while Jack's wish to regain his rank has been a continuous background trait since day one, it is still very much that, whereas Derek's ambitions have always come with a degree of on screen conflict with Charles which continous to play out here. Derek finally letting loose on Charles is cathartic for both Derek and the audience, and I've always had a massive love for heavy pivotal character moments coming in comedic episodes so a+++ there. The Old Marrieds energy is strong in all directions in this ep, with Andrew also getting in on the action despite his rather brief appearance. (That being said, there's a very clear implication that so much of this ep happens specifically because Andrew isn't there to keep things under control).

One of the classic Alistair eps, and also one of the episodes that does a good job of incorporating characters from other task forces, something the show often had mixed results with but does well with here.

A young boy has gone missing and it is believed he may of run off to a friend who is working as a rent boy in central London, with the search for him leading Team Sun Hill into the middle of an ongoing Vice Squad operation.

Obviously it's a really good Alistair ep - we see both his strengths as a policeman and as a sergeant and I do like how frank he is with Frank about his reasons for not wanting Steve on the obbo. We also get to see his background as a Vice Squad officer come into play and it's always fun when characters get to pull out their previous skill sets. For the most part, the show was quite good with keeping the character's specialisms and service-related backgrounds at the forefront of relevant cases, but this is absolutely one of the stronger examples of it.

An incredibly strong episode to start the list off with, and one that was difficult to just pick 10 gifs from, especially since it was a feature-length episode. The script does really well with its extended run time; it allows for a lot of good character work while dealing a more complex than usual murder mystery without the pacing either being rushed or having to drag its heels at any point.

This remains one of my all time favourite Jack episodes, and that’s largely down to the fact his flaws are fully - and very intentionally - on display here. One of the problems I had with him, especially towards the end, was the increasingly pervasive perception that Jack had always been a stalwart father-to-his-men type of leader and while he does show shades of this throughout his tenure, especially to those he had a soft spot for, it isn’t really until Mickey comes along that this actually becomes a prominent character trait. Here we see classic Jack, and that is a shrewd, capable investigator, but also ultimately self-serving officer who is quick to leap onto an opportunity and quick to try and deflect blame when things go wrong, thinks nothing of cheating on his wife, and doesn’t know actually know his team well enough to have an opinion on who best to take to France or even question Chris’ suggestion. The script doesn’t shy away from any of this and is stronger for it, and it’s a good piece of set up for what is to come in a year's time.

It’s also a really fun episode for Chris, who gets to enact his revenge on Jack for snaffling the France trip while at the same time managing the investigation pretty well on the home front. There were points where Chris would just kind of fade into the background as the stock beleaguered CID senior officer, so it's always fun when they let him do things.

Another big part of why I love this episode is as much for the things it doesn’t do as much as the things it does; it would have been incredibly easy to turn this ep into a full-blown farcical comedy of errors, but for the most part they keep the balance right. Things go wrong, people mess up, but nothing that completely stretches believability. Rod isn’t a perpetual Butt-Monkey, as he often ends up being, and it’s very clear to both the audience and the writer that Jack is just as responsible (if not more so) for many of the problems they encounter. They could have easily drawn out the point of Rod not actually knowing French, but he comes clean about it the first time he’s outright confronted with it and while the bureaucratic roadblocks do cause issues and feed some conflict into the plot, they are perfectly navigable with some effort and common sense, and are presented as such, even if some officers show more common sense than others.