Written by: Lizzie Mickery
Directed by: Jamie Nuttgens
Produced by: Bruce MacDonald

Add stupid, wilful, immature, badly written, poorly supervised and downright wet and you've pretty much summed the story up. In my opinion Burnside, Sam and the audience deserved better than they got in this episode.

The story is picked up only a few minutes after the previous episode finished. Burnside has just about finished spluttering about Sam having shaved her pubic hair for the photo shoot in order to intrigue Mark Evans, the photographer she favours as a suspect. Intelligently he realises that this would be an extremely difficult case to get to trial given Blind Freddy's deaf cat, Mary, could tell it was entrapment – unaccountably, however, he decides to go ahead with it. Sure we have all the usual lines about excrement hitting fans and denial but it still seems odd to me that a man of Burnside's experience, cunning and cleverness should go along with a half-baked wild cat scheme like this.

Sam, Burnside and our tame profiler, Anna Grantham, work as a team on this Mark Evans undercover while Dave is shut out to continue following up the dead girl's boyfriend, Jerry Forbes. Needless to say, just as it always does on The Bill, this lack of knowledge causes problems. Dent and the rest of the AMIP squad, including Dave, are holding a reconstruction of Louise Riley's last known movements when Mark Evans decides to take his new friend Sam to watch. This does rather blow the secrecy of that little piece of undercover despite Dave's best efforts to get rid of them and Sam's best efforts to flee. As she has behaved like a vampire offered a nice dish of garlic nuns she then has to produce a reason for her apparent terror of the police – so she 'confesses' to Evans that she killed her mother. Rather than take Lawrence Olivier's reputed advice – "Just act, my dear boy, it's so much easier." she goes for full method acting and uses her own drunken mother and her own feelings with only the deed being imaginary. As you do, Evans thinks an appropriate response to this would be to take her into the bathroom and introduce her to the razor of his dead father - a 'real man' who drank ten pints a night. Amazingly enough he then manages to shave her without water, shave cream or anything else and inflict not even a nick. (Pause while I grab another handful of suspend disbelief pills.)

Later that night Sam goes to her mother's place and, finding her in a drunken sleep on the lounge – as in her 'confession' where she smothered her with a cushion – picks up a cushion and stands holding it above her for a few seconds before tucking it under her head and speaking soothingly. Sam has learnt, it would seem, the truth about undercover - doing undercover the scariest person you meet is yourself.

The next morning Dave demands – and gets – in on the operation. In a very constructive debrief Anna Grantham throws a paddy and stomps out – My bill's in the mail – while Dave and Sam snipe and snarl.

Sam: "Whole towns could be massacred while you read the handbook." (Why let logic, relevance or accuracy stand in the way of a good insult?)

Dave: "I don't want to be saying words at your funeral." (The way she was behaving you would have to assume it was fear of public speaking that had him worried.)

Fresh from that pleasurable meeting Burnside falls into his boss's clutches. Superintendent Lee favours us with the following description of Burnside.

"…unmarried middle-aged man with a line in expensive suits and a stale whiff of a past…"

and suggests he should have quit to play golf in Spain years ago. Lee then does the classic management technique of washing his hands of the matter and vanishes back into his virtual-Trevdom.

Burnside then goes to make his peace with Dr Grantham and to find out whether she thinks Sam is stable. (If you seriously have to ask that, Francis, then perhaps you should be polishing your golfing swing.) He also wants to know what her perspective is on his behaviour – and this is where the clips for the trailers for this week were taken, which made it appear they were heading towards a Burnside/Sam Philips relationship. This week, thankfully, they seem to have backed away from that in favour of a 'daughter I never had/baby Burnside' type connection. My problem is that I can't watch this without memories of Viv Martella popping up in my mind – Viv aping Burnside's sneaky tricks in court and getting it in the neck, Viv threatening to break his nose, Burnside in a darkening office sliding her life into a paper bag – but I'll bet my pension that the writer/director/producer of Burnside certainly never gave Viv a thought and more than probably don't even know she existed.

Down by the river Burnside havers between cancelling the operation and believing Sam that they can get him. In a moment of quiet honesty he tells her,

"If you die I'll lose more than my pension."

He can't deny that he would put his own neck on the line in similar circumstances, though, and settles on a fancy microphone (odd he was carrying it if he intended to cancel the operation, isn't it?) and the tougher sentiment of:

"I want this bastard and I want my pension – that's the remit."

Predictably this means that Burnside gets to listen to Evans and Sam having sex after Evans had first threatened/pretended to garrotte her with his tie – as the serial killer does. Sam staggers downstairs and is sick in front of a very interested audience of nasty AMIP types but later recovers to chirp

"Solved the problem – he can shag – why would he want to kill again?"

To slightly misquote something Inspector Monroe once shouted at Dave Quinnan in The Bill - there are basic minimum requirements to get into the Police Service; how can she be so stupid?

When Sam sees Mark Evans to tell him that actually he was lousy, in the hope that this will make him mad enough to kill, he chooses her as his next victim and begins following her. Her mother unwittingly lets him into her flat and gets a razor blade held to her neck for her pains. Very adaptable little serial killer is Mark Evans – always ready for a new technique. *snort* Luckily, Sam is able to use her super-duper microphone thingy to alert Burnside (who appears to demonstrate remarkable powers of ESP to know to listen in) and is therefore rescued in the nick – if you'll pardon a razor pun – of time.

The entirely regrettable hat that Sam began last week's episode in resurfaces for the final scene. Burnside and Sam stand by the river and talk about how she'll handle the trial with what Evan's lawyer will undoubtable throw at her. I have one little suggestion – wear that hat into court and they'll be so busy laughing they won't care if she had sex dressed as a Tory politician.

DCI Burnside – Chris Ellison
DC Sam Philips – Zoe Eeles
DS Dave Summers – Justin Pierre
Supt Brian Lee – Andrew Readman
DC Chris Gibson – Paul Gilmore
DC Pete Moss – John White
Mark Evans – Sean Gleeson
Jerry Forbes – Mark Letheren
Dr Anna Grantham – Kate Gartside
DI Dent – Dennis Banks
DC McVeagh – Murray MacArthur
Cath Foxton – Ishia Bennison
Mrs Philips – Susie Baxter
School Friends – Ashley Walker, Michelle Ryan

© Avon 2001

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