Review: Scott & Bailey (S4 E5/8), Wednesday 8th October, ITV

Compelling basket-case Rachel Bailey (played with petulant panache by Suranne Jones) has to be the most spectacularly self-centred character on TV at the moment. And her selfishness, twinned with her steel-plated ego, will not allow her to brook any realisation that she is quite unsuited to high office in the police force – or being put in charge of anything more complicated than a washing machine for that matter.

Case in point: she is still fizzing with indignation that she only got her promotion by default. It hasn’t even occurred to her to find out what is ailing her friend and more competent colleague Janet (Lesley Sharp) so much that she passed on a richly deserved advancement (because she’s saddled with two shrewish daughters and a mother who all derive pleasure from blackmailing her emotionally).

It doesn’t help that she’s still airing her grievance against her DCI, Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore), in front of the whole squad at morning briefings. Classy. Way to let your sisters down, Rach.

Murray’s temper is getting worse. She was always a big tippler out of hours; now that she’s started keeping spirits in her bottom drawer at work she’s on the slippery slope. And it’s no good clinging to the belief that voddy isn’t detectable on the breath when you start mumbling sotto voce like a bag-lady in front of subordinates. Kind-hearted Janet is probably doing her no favours when she offers her boss a breath mint in the Ladies’. Is Murray about to put an indelible blot on her hitherto creditable career weeks before her retirement?

Drunk she may be, but Murray is still sharp enough to cotton on to Rachel’s clandestine affair with Detective Superintendent Will Pemberton (Steve Toussaint).  Rachel also can’t stop whingeing about Murray to her beloved – there’s a passion-killer in waiting.

The nasty stuff hits the fan after Rachel is recommended for a three-month vice squad training course. Murray suspects that she’s been blind-sided by a scheming Rachel and rages at her in – you guessed it – the pub.

All the personal mudslinging at least takes a back seat for a while to a possible case of parental child abuse. A toddler is admitted to hospital with head injuries and dies on the operating table. His fractures are definitely not commensurate with the couple’s account of events.

It is possible, reckons salty old coroner Prof Jackson (Judy Holt) that the child has been thrown at a wall with some force. And 13-month-olds don’t usually test positive for cocaine use. (We like no-nonsense, seen-it-all Prof Jackson; she’s a bit like an older version of Lewis’s Laura – minus the come-hither looks.)

Jenny and Marcus – a middle-class, well-educated but clearly overstressed young couple – at first try to pin the blame for the death on their very legal rights-savvy child-minder and her less accomplished thug of a boyfriend.

But the brittle couple seem deeply paranoid and Rachel immediately suspects that the baby wasn’t the only person in the family being knocked about. Murray brings down the cone of silence to stop the press turning the case into a Baby P scenario. “There’s bound to be some grim-arsed journo looking for a payday on this one,” she warns her squad.

Coronation Street stalwart Noreen Kershaw deftly directs Sharp’s grim interview room scenes with Marcus, played by Andrew (The History Boys) Knott. All are serving at the top of their game during this tearful confrontation.

And the reason for Danny Webb’s casting as DC Chris Crowley is beginning to emerge; a glimmer of a romantic spark is appearing in his scenes with Sharp.

Rachel, of course, is on this as fast as a whippet. “He has that sexy knackered look,” she observes.

Janet, if you’re going to any chance of happiness with a fella you must stop confiding in Rachel, the human Heat magazine.

Deborah Shrewsbury

For our episode one review go here

For our episode two review go here

For our episode three review go here

For our episode four review go here