Written by: Steve Griffiths
Directed by: Justin Hardy
Produced by: Jamie Nuttgens

Oh, where is Bob Cryer to say "Bollocks!"  when you need him?  For all the hoopla about Burnside being darker and harder-edged than The Bill it simply isn't.  Sure there's more sex, blood and obscenities - but they do not a dark universe make.  Where The Bill had the courage to let Burnside not soften his rock-like facade when one of his officers died – leaving both colleagues and the thicker members of the audience in some doubt as to whether he even cared - a snout gets shot in Burnside and he tell the entire bleeding world about his feelings. *Snort!*  I kept expecting him to give his therapist a call or start making quiche.  If they wanted a different character from Burnside then they should have cast someone else, chosen a different name and let the series stand or fall on its own merits.  If they wanted Frank Burnside – the man who appeared in The Bill for many years – then they should have written him accordingly.  One of their fundamental problems is that Burnside seems to have had a mindwipe so he remembers nothing from 1972 until now.  It's as though a different company was making it and they had been banned from mentioning anything that happened during The Bill.  A classic example is when Burnside is belly-aching – in most un-Burnside fashion - about how Tony Shotton died in his arms, just like Barry Foxton did almost thirty years before.  That he also cradled Kim Hyde as she died a measly three years ago seems to have escaped both him and the scriptwriter.  The true tragedy is that there are - interspersed between the slop, the dur-Freddy moments and the clumsy symbolism - glimpses of the show they could have made. They're brief moments but they are there - Burnside being blandly innocent for the Superintendent's benefit, Burnside giving a subordinate a well-deserved roasting or Burnside trading quips with Sam.   

The episode tonight was always going to suffer a little from the fact that it had to provide an ending while leaving lead-offs to a hoped-for second series.  Consequently it tied up the Vickers's story, while leaving him as a possible continuing character and provided a totally unsatisfying ending to the already unsatisfying Ronnie Buchan storyline.

The episode started with Burnside and Angie, Tony Shotton's widow, exchanging deathless lines of dialogue (and they say TB has become soapy!) such as 

Angie: "All I know is he trusted you, Frank, and now he's dead."

Frank: "Tony and I were friends."

We move on to Dave, Vickers, Judy and assorted of Vickers' yobs having brekkie and discussing the eminent arrival and storage of one hundred million pounds in used banknotes.  As even they realise, it's going to be a fairly bulky thing to hide while waiting for Dave to finish setting up iffy bank accounts for it.  The answer turns out to be to hire a lovely old, but isolated, house out in the country and fill the empty swimming pool with the money.  They clearly have more faith in the English weather than I do!

The next scene features Frank having a heart to heart with Jim Summers, his newly re-found best friend.  This consists mostly of waffle about Shotton and the comparison of Shotton and Foxton's death.   The views of London through windows as they walk the corridors of some building easily being the highlight of the scene. 

Inevitably, Dave is forced to tell Burnside about what had happened with Judy as Burnside wants him to wear a wire which could get awkward if she's going to keep taking his clothes off.  In the end he wears one anyway.  This does produce the most Burnside line of the series really -  given that the original Burnside wasn't politically correct and was very rarely nice  (as evidenced by the continual roasting he gave Alistair Greig simply for being Scottish, educated and the sort of man who would never pee in his bath.)  Sam says,

"So did you rise to the occasion – or did you just lie back and think of England?"

and Burnside smirks,

"Or was it just Michael Owen?"

By putting a tracking device on the truck that picked up the money – disguised as fresh cut flowers – from Ealing we are able to set up an obbo on the property.  Watching Vickers lying around on top of the pool of money Burnside snorts,

"Goes to prove what I've always thought...crap always rises."

After some fairly confusing discussion about 'last night' - when it wasn't last night but the one before – one of Vickers' yobs convinces him that something must have happened between Judy and Dave.  Vickers then thumps Dave around a bit for giving his girl one, while saying that he will get the one appropriate punishment for betraying him.  Dave manages to convince him however of the truth – Judy is not of the sex he is interested in.  When he asks about what this punishment would have been Vickers tells him,

"Remington 870 – pump action.  If you don't believe me ask Tony Shotton's widow."

The scene closes on Dave asking who is Tony Shotton.

The scene cuts from there to Burnside and Sam questioning a friend of Craig Shotton, whom they know Craig rang, about whether he tipped Ronnie Buchan off about Shotton's location.  Well, actually, Burnside is asking the questions, while smashing car windows with a tyre lever.  He warns Slick,  Craig's friend,

"Don't lie to me, pal – there's no future in it."

Then almost proves the truth of that by going towards him with the tyre lever poised to do some serious damage.  Sam, however, shrieks in time.

Stomping back to the car Burnside and Sam have the following snarled conversation,

Burnside: "Don't ever interrupt me like that again!"

Sam: "Don't ever put me in that position again – sir."

Burnside: "Do we have a problem, Samantha?"

Sam: "You know we do."

When Burnside listens to the tape from Dave he hears the answer as to who is Tony Shotton – someone who betrayed Vickers by turning snout, and who was therefore personally killed by Vickers.

As Vickers says, 

"Scum like that, who betray their own - they don't deserve to live – you remember that."

Burnside, sitting in his half-darkened office, says slowly,

"Oh, I will, Dale – I will."

Burnside then heads off to Vickers' country house, having told Sam that Dave has said there will be a security sweep and to pull the obbo off for the night.  Once there Burnside makes his way out onto the pool-cover, slashes it, pulls out a few bundles of plastic wrapped notes and pours accelerant from a small but Tardis-like bottle into the pool and then in a trail across the cover to a pool edge.  One lighter flame later the pool is a mass of roaring flames while Vickers hangs out a window and shouts ineffectually for his goons to do something.  

The next day when Sam's 'ninjas' return they are met by a few scorched notes blowing around, amongst some eddying gusts of ashes.  The pool is completely empty – bar a tantrum throwing Vickers.  Now, I'm not a fire fighter and I promise to say this only once but YEAH, RIGHT – I DON'T THINK SO!!  I remember all to clearly the TB episode where someone tried to burn bales of magazines and the fire investigator pointed out that due to a lack of oxygen only the edges would burn - and they weren't wedged into a swimming pool!

Of course it doesn't take long for Sam and Dave, discussing the incident to suss out what Burnside has done.  Sam is ready to make excuses for him but as Dave says, it is tantamount to murder as the Russians will surely kill Vickers.  Burnside rejects Sam's excuses –

"Oh, stuff the therapy!"

- and points out to Dave that he's got no proof.  Burnside offers the justification that,

"The truth is that the law can't handle people like Vickers."

Given he's a two-bit villain who fancies himself that would be a sad look out for Britain if that was the truth!   However, the truth is that Burnside had taped evidence, Dave as,  presumably, a not-able-to-be-intimidated witness and a swimming pool full of difficult to explain money.  He would have to have had an excellent chance in court.  If there was no other way of getting him Burnside might just have done it but not when he could do him legally.

When Dave finishes the argument by telling Burnside that at least his dad never crossed the line I think even the dimmest member of the audience must have realised that Jim Summers was a crook – if the flashing sign above his head wasn't clear enough last week.

Earlier Dave had made the need to visit to George Maitland – the accountant whose job with Vickers he took – his excuse to leave Vickers.  Now, unfortunately, the same clever yob who'd tumbled to there being something between Dave and Judy has also checked up on George and discovered his house is for sale.  Vickers told him to investigate further – even get a security consultant if necessary.  When the  story cuts back to Vickers waiting at the farm for the Russians to arrive, Jim Summers – aka his security consultant – comes to tell him that George has disappeared completely and all trace of him has been erased.  He doesn't think it is the cops who have done it and suggests Buchan could be responsible.  Unwittingly he has just signed Dave's death warrant.  On cue Dave arrives to be introduced and Jim realises what he's done.  As soon as he drives off he pulls over and calls Burnside.  He tells Burnside that they're going to kill Dave and that the Russians are due in two hours.  He also tells him that if he wants answers after this is over he should go to Ronnie Buchan.

Back at the farm Dave may not be dead but he is getting a right pasting - and when he won't grass up Buchan Vickers breaks one of his fingers.  I had been pre-warned so I had my hands over my ears but it was still revolting!  Stopped from killing Dave by the suggestion he may be able to help convince the Russians Vickers whips out a nasty little knife and starts making plans for a wee bit of genital reconstruction.  (Is it just me or does anyone have trouble picturing a man who has just had his penis chopped off doing persuasive arguments?)  However Judy arrives, with a gun, in the nick of time.  She reveals that she is a plant of Ronnie Buchan – really, Vickers' parents should have been more careful in their choice of godparent – but most unfortunately wusses out on pulling the trigger. Before  Vickers  can wreak any vengeance on her he is interrupted by the arrival of a flash  looking car.  Naturally everyone expects it to be the Russians but equally naturally it is our Frankie B.  His entrance, as he strolls unconcernedly towards a bunch of people holding guns on him is undoubtedly a little OTT but, equally undoubtable, it is cool – and Burnside in cool, tough mode always does it for me.

Burnside explains to Vickers to his likely fate when the Russians arrive, 

"I wouldn't think there'd be any chance of peace talks – in which case you're road-kill."

They then go off for a private chat by the ash-grimed and empty pool.  Burnside plays the tape of Vickers admitting to Tony Shotton's killing and tells him that as punishment he is going to become his snout.

"As my snout you'd be associated with them all – MI5, FBI, Bodie and Doyle.  Only thing is, Tony Shotton and I will own your soul."

The Russians have, in fact, been intercepted by the police en-route and the police  are now swarming all over the farm.  Dave has disappeared but Sam is able to tell Burnside that he's gone to his dad's.  

When Burnside arrives there Jim Summers is lying sprawled on the couch with a table beside it carrying pill and booze bottles.  Dave is sitting – miraculously unbloody – at the other end of the room and shouts 'DON'T!' at Burnside when he moves towards Jim to see if he is dead.  The camera then focuses on Dave wiping away one tear but this cynical viewer's withers remained unwrung, I'm afraid.

The next scene is Burnside and Ronnie Buchan meeting at a open air book sale.  The meeting clearly has been pre-arranged so Buchan can tell Burnside about Summers and how far back his corruption went.  After some smirking about how Frank used to look up to Jim Summers, Buchan tells him that Summers was his snout back in 1972 when Foxton died.  Burnside punches him.  Buchan, little worried, quips,

"Interview terminated, isn't it?"

Burnside responds with his best steely face and a line that is obviously designed to set up a second series of conflict with Buchan,

"For now – there'll be another time – just you and me."

From the point of trying to chronicle Burnside history 1972 is an interesting date.  It must have been shortly before he took on the cover of a corrupt copper in Operation Countryman and, unless his marriage was very brief, he was probably married at this time.

The series finishes with Burnside turning up at Tony Shotton's bar where his widow is sorting through a pile of bills.  Burnside drops some bundles of smoky money on the table, obviously a part of Vickers' hundred million and hot as well as smokey.  As he tells her,

"Do the laundry right and no one will smell it."

We then see Frank Burnside walk to the end of an alley, turn onto the road, pause for a moment, apparently in thought, and then walk off.  The credits roll on that.  It would appear we may just have seen the very last of Burnside.

DCI Burnside – Chris Ellison
DC Sam Philips – Zoe Eeles
DS Dave Summers – Justin Pierre
Supt Brian Lee – Andrew Readman
Angie Shotton – Virginia Fiol
Jim Summers – Tony Selby
Ronnie Buchan – Paul Nicholas
DC Chris Gibson – Paul Gilmore
DC Pete Moss – John White
Dale Vickers – Cristian Solimeno
Stu – Ricky Groves
Jules – Andrew French
Donna – Sharlene Whyte
Kurt – Carsten Voight
Heinrich – Reinhard Michaels
Slick – Huss Garbiya

© Avon 2001

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