The ep is rather slow-moving during the first half but dosed with some humour ("Where were you last night?" / "Had an urgent meeting with my psychiatrist!" / "Well... the head needs shrinking!"). And the scene with Doyle stood in the street with a bunch of flowers is yet another example of the show's self-mockery. From Bodie's meeting with Marikka in the hotel, however, we're back to the pacing and pizzazz we've come to expect!

The plot is excellent and highly complex, as is necessary.

Bodie and Marikka are an interesting item (well, Pam Salem is, anyway! <G>). But instead of being excited to see her again, Bodie's reaction to Marikka seems oddly restrained - perhaps after being "let down" by her years before, he still doesn't quite trust her?

All the action stuff is well choreographed, as we have come to expect.

A great finish to the second season!

WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD!!!....

Despite Bodie's suspicions over Marikka, his complete lack of reaction to her being murdered is very odd indeed! Actually the final scenes in the story don't appear to make much sense at first glance. Willis and Schuman, realising that they have failed to frame Bodie, decide to let Marikka take the blame for the assassination and kill her so that she cannot testify against them and also to make it look as though she was regarded as an enemy agent and killed as punishment for the Bierman's slaying. I'm not sure this really works, though, as they would not be able to provide any hard evidence against Marikka.

Good things: Doyle's dirty laugh. In the beginning Doyle is delightfully ribald – a side of him we haven't seen before. This is a man who could be terrific fun! He is earthy and bawdy and quite naughty about using the R/T for a clandestine social contact. Doyle has some great lines in this episode.

Bodie is extraordinarily beautiful. We get lots of close-ups. His broody nature is given full play and the camera shows his long eyelashes to incredible advantage. Of course he does wear The Awful Brown Cardigan again. Well, we can't have everything.

The camera work during the final shoot-out scene is excellent.

Not so good things:

I realise there is a lot of back-story that we don't see but it's difficult to accept that Bodie really desires poor Marikka much less loves her. He is, at first, apparently content to just talk on the phone and when they meet he seems awkward and reluctant to get close. Granted, given the opportunity, he does move in, but it seems far too slow and careful for a man of such obvious natural passion as this. Even in the hotel room he does not seem all that eager to get on with matters. He looks smug and pleased, but not excited.

And his dead-panned reaction to seeing Doyle from the window is also odd. He does not seem concerned that Doyle is following and watching him.

Cowley fighting for Bodie is good to see. He pulls out the stops and uses Doyle to best advantage.

Doyle, however, toward the end seems oddly passive. This is not the firecracker we've come to know & love. He asked Cowley about following Bodie when, it seems, the thing he ought to have done was just go after his partner even if it meant taking a beating emotionally, verbally or physically. His facial expression is strange, too. Works with the story however: disgust, confusion, self-hatred.

What in the world does Cowley mean by "Make sure your own house is in order, 4.5"?

(The phrase generally means "mind your own business" but here perhaps what Cowley means is that, like Bodie, Doyle may have a past he would rather not reveal. Or perhaps it's a reference to Doyle having spirited away the evidence from the police station and Cowley is warning Doyle to make sure it stays securely hidden away. -Dave)

And, of course, it is a story about betrayal - in order to achieve a particular aim, Willis (MI6?) plans to sacrifice Bodie even though he's quite aware of Bodie's innocence and his position at CI5.

An odd episode.

Note that in the gun battle before Bodie takes to the stairs, as he's running into the building, he slips and fires wildly. <G> Lew misstepped and the camera kept rolling. Nice save, Lew!

(In fact there is a glitch here because we see Lew slip just outside the building - yet the camera then cuts to an interior shot and we see Lew's legs on the inside! -Dave)

Holland Park itself provides the meeting place for Bodie and Marikka. Cowley's open-air meeting with Willis takes place here, too.

The hotel from which the assassination takes place is The Gloucester, Harrington Gardens, Kensington, SW7.

Willis' office is Honeywell House, Great West Road, Brentford but the building is long gone.

The service station at which Bodie meets Kreiber for the first time is the west-bound side of Heston Services (owned by Granada at the time of filming), off Phoenix Way, Heston in Middlesex.

The police station Bodie is taken to is actually on the site of the long-demolished Cadby Hall.

Southall's "The Straight" and White Street house the huge gas holder Bodie clambers up. We're not sure if the one seen here is the actual one as there were several other units on the site back in 1979. In the foreground you would have seen the White Lion pub as used in 'Mixed Doubles' but it was pulled down years ago.

... Furthermore, the romantic meeting between Bodie and Marikka in the hotel is accompanied by a track called "Night Line" by Frank McDonald and Chris Rae, to be found on an album named "Hair of the Dog" by rival library De Wolfe. (Sadly the track isn't available on CD).

Patrick Malahide (Green) came to fame as dogged Sergeant Chisholm in the classic comedy drama Minder. Has guested in many other crime shows such as Sweeney, Shoestring, Morse, eventually playing the lead in The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries. Also had an infamously, ahem, "passionate" scene in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective. Starred alongside Martin Shaw in Who Bombed Birmingham? Oh - he got eaten by a giant rat in a New Avengers episode!!

Michael Redfern (CI5 agent at the safe-house) is chiefly remembered for the Oxo TV adverts of the 80s and 90s