Three: Burden of Proof
Part three begins by briefly switching the POV character to Lowe as the police raid his flat to arrest him. Although we also see the policemannys getting ready and taking up their positions, which builds the tension because it means we know something is about to happen, rather than it being a surprise, which it is for Lowe.
It cuts away just as the police burst in through Lowe's door, so we don't see exactly how Lowe ends up defenestrated and badly hurt. Ronnie and Jedburgh only arrive on the scene after it has happened, and Ronnie's friend says
"The bastard jumped."
though since Ronnie's friend is a policemanny we have to suspect that the suspect was "jumped" out of the window by the police.
DCS Ross tells Ronnie to go to the hopistal to ask Lowe who the murderer was. Before he sees Lowe, there is a long atmospheric scene as the place reminds Ronnie of when his wife was in the hopistal.
While Ronnie is talking to Lowe, we are being introduced to the baddys of the series, Jerry Grogan and Robert Bennett (Hugh "Hastings" Fraser, not normally cast in this type of role but so good at it that it's a wonder he didn't end up typecast after this). Bennett owns IIF, which makes him the equivalent of Stevens, while Grogan is the manny who wants to take it over, which I suppose makes him the BOSS. They are the only ones who know everything that happened in Northmoor, because not even Jedburgh, Harcourt and Pendleton know everything yet.
Lowe names McCroon as the murderer, who Ronnie once arrested when he was in Northern Ireland. Ronnie falls out with Ross because he thinks Lowe and McCroon were just henchmannys for somebody else who gave them the gun and told them where to find him, while Ross thinks they could have managed that on their own and that Ronnie is "cracking up" in seeing a larger conspiracy behind it.
Emma's ghost is also worried about Ronnie, appearing to tell him
"You've got to be strong like a tree, don't break."
This is the first time we hear Ronnie get compared to a tree, and it was supposedly foreshadowing for the original ending of the series that was planned* before they changed it, so in the end this doesn't really foreshadow anything.
Ronnie goes to see another old friend, Mac from Northern Ireland. When Ronnie tells Mac that McCroon murdered Emma, Mac immediately sees further than Ross did and asks
"What's in it for McCroon, why would he do it?"
Ronnie asks Mac to help him get access to the MI5 computer, which Carlisle couldn't (or wouldn't) do for him back in part two.
Jedburgh and Pendleton go to visit Terry Shields, and find that both he and the manny who was supposed to be keeping him under surveillance have been killed. This is a superbly tense scene, as Jedburgh looks through the house for Terry and the camera follows closely behind him. It reminds me in a way of the scene in Smiley's People where Smiley finds Otto Leipzig, in that the killing is long over and the danger has passed, but Smiley/Jedburgh/we don't know that.
The Houses of Parliament is the appropriately grand setting for the first meeting of all the main characters, when Ronnie attends a parliamentary inquiry into Grogan's IIF takeover at the request of Harcourt and Pendleton. He sees Bennett and Grogan across the room and his eyes meet Bennett's. We don't need the incidental music to tell us this is significant, the acting is more than sufficient.
Harcourt explains (part of) what's going on to Ronnie:
Ronnie: "You want me to be a witness?"Harcourt: "We'll provide you with all the information necessary to blast Bennett out of the water."Ronnie: "Why me?"Harcourt: "Our intelligence is coming from people whose cover we can't afford to blow, but anything coming from you would look as though you picked it up in the course of investigating your daughter's death."
Ronnie is introduced to "Clemmy" (Zoë Wanamaker), who is a friend of Jedburgh and another spy. She is able to tell Ronnie a bit more about Jedburgh's past, which adds some much-needed humour to this episode and prevents it from being pitch-black. Especially when the next scenes include Emma's funeral and another flashback to when Ronnie's wife died.
Ronnie returns to his home, where he and Ross expect that McCroon will try to kill Ronnie again. They would appear to be correct, as we see McCroon watching the house from a distance. That means that this is a cliffhanger!
* An earlier draft of this review explained what the originally planned ending to the series was.
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