A shady businessman called Steven Ballard (John Bowe) is making a brief return to the UK in order to give evidence to a Commons Select Committee.  Various vested interests, apparently from the Middle East, would sooner he kept quiet, so he’s targeted for assassination …..

Ballard and Liz rather hit it off.  He might be a ruthless type in business, but he also possesses a considerable amount of charm and whilst Liz doesn’t bend, possibly she buckles ever so slightly.

Liz, Worrell and a third agent, Stuart Robbins (Ashley Barker) take it in turns to guard Ballard.  Since we’ve not seen Robbins before it shouldn’t be too hard to guess the way things turn out (if he had been wearing a red shirt it would have been even clearer).

Once again, the way the Close Protection Unit handles their charge is a little eye-raising.  Ballard stays in his own property – a fairly substantial building – with only one agent guarding him.  When a cat apparently triggers the alarm sensors it rather highlights how stretched they are – if Liz is by the window shooing the cat, who’s looking after Ballard?

During Robbins’ tour of duty things go badly wrong.  An assassin breaks in, shoots Robbins, then shoots a figure in the shower (which turns out to be Ballard’s maid) and is only frightened off after Ballard hits the alarm.  Not exactly the Close Protection Unit’s finest hour ….

David Saville is on good form as Nigel Henderson, a rather shady government type who’s quite keen to sweep this unpleasantness under the carpet.  After all, the maid was an illegal immigrant so there shouldn’t be any problems there.  Liz later raises the intriguing possibility that the British government might be the ones who would be happy if Ballard didn’t testify.

There’s also the possibility that Ballard’s security was compromised by someone inside his own organisation.  We don’t see many of Ballard’s people, so it seems obvious that his trusted right-hand man Greg Burns (Nick Reading) is the guilty party.  Or is that just too obvious?

Julian Jones penned four episodes of Bodyguards in addition to contributing to a score of popular series during the nineties (Taggart, Perfect Scoundrels, Stay Lucky, Soldier Soldier, Between the Lines, 99-1, Wycliffe, The Bill, The Ambassador) and more recently created the popular Saturday evening drama Merlin.

Target, by playing up the angle that no-one (not even their own masters) can be trusted, ups the ante a little, and whilst the nature of episodic television means that the reset switch has to be hit at the end, it helps to make the episode a cut above the norm.  The gun-heavy climax is entertaining as well.

Worrell is designated to be the close protection agent on Robert Connor (William Hope), a right-wing Presidential hopeful.  Liz is put in overall command, which doesn’t please Golding (Aaron Swartz), a particularly aggressive American agent.  He doesn’t seem terribly impressed with the fact that she’s a woman, although the problem may be more that she’s British ….

Familiar tensions between the British and American agents are seen throughout Know Thine Enemy.  The Americans are all aggressive, trigger happy and unwilling to defer to anyone else – all clichés of course, but they help to stoke up the drama.

The way they approach the problem of Michael Aaronson (Peter Marinker) helps to highlight their differing approaches.  Aaronson holds Connor morally responsible (policy wise) for the death of his son and his arrival in Britain sets alarm bells ringing.  The Americans want him picked up and detained but MacIntyre – whilst happy to keep him under twenty-four hour surveillance –  won’t authorise this.

Given that Aaronson has no history of violence – he’s simply a political activist – the way he’s dealt with raises some interesting questions.  If they attempt to prevent his protest (he wants to present Connor with a petition requesting stricter gun control) then Aaronson’s civil liberties have obviously been interfered with – but is this the intention of the American agents?  Or do they truly believe he’s capable of violence?

Either way it’s slightly terrifying how the State apparatus is able to monitor him with ease, which raises the debate (not really touched upon here – the agents have already picked their side) about how far the liberties of the individual should be eroded in the quest to prevent terrorist attacks.

Liz intercepts and searches him and is happy that he presents no violent threat.  She then allows him to take his place outside the Queen Elizabeth Centre, where Connor is speaking, so Aaronson can hand over a petition.  But she doesn’t seem to have mentioned this to Golding and the other American agents, so when they see Aaronson reaching into a bag they naturally react promptly and violently.

You can’t blame them for their actions, which poses the question as to whether Liz deliberately didn’t tell them that Aaronson was present but not armed.  Given the storm of negative newspaper coverage it’s hard to imagine she would have done so, which leave us with the probability that Liz just screwed up.  She does tell MacIntyre that communications were fraught, but you’d have assumed this would have been a fairly vital piece of information to pass on.

Aaronson – hospitalized with a broken arm – isn’t unhappy though, as he’s gained the sort of publicity he previously could only dream of.  This enables him to give Liz a lead on a potentially dangerous threat to Connor.

Throughout the episode we’ve seen a nail-bomb being prepared.  Initially it seemed that Aaronson might be responsible, but after he’s put out of action – and the bomb-making continues – it becomes clear that the threat isn’t coming from him.  As with previous Bodyguards episodes, the hostile party is presented in a rather abstract way (we learn little about them).

Worrell and Liz are split up for most of the episode.  Worrell gets a few lighter moments – mocking Aaronson and the others (Worrell has a decent American accent) – but he’s rather placed into the background here.  Liz, fretting about her first taste of command, has more to do, but Know Thine Enemy never really sparks into life.  It’s decent enough fare, but lacks the personal edge of some of the previous stories.

A thirteen year-old boy called Alan Taylor (Dean Steel) is the only witness to the murder of a priest and will therefore be vital in gaining a successful conviction.  Worrell, returning from compassionate leave, is assigned – along with Liz – to the job of protecting him in the run up to the trial.  MacIntyre considers it to be just the sort of routine mission which will gently ease him back into the swing of things, but events prove otherwise …..

Police intelligence seems to be somewhat lacking in this one.  MacIntyre doesn’t take the threats against Alan seriously and the investigating officers, lead by DCS Granger (Roger Blake), appear not to have linked the murder to a feral teenage Manchester gang, all of whom are skilled in the use of firearms.

That Alan and his family are under serious threat is made plain when his younger brother, Jamie (Dean Cook), is kidnapped.  But this is a strange part of the story – you’d assume that Jamie’s abduction would be the lever that forces Alan’s mother, Helen (Eve Bland), to withdraw her elder son from testifying – but not so.  Jamie is discovered, albeit dosed in petrol and traumatised, unhurt.

We never find out why they didn’t hang onto him, as the gang remain nebulous characters, little more than objects of abstract menace.  None of them have names or speaking roles, which skewers the narrative very firmly on the police’s side.  Programmes like The Bill also favoured this storytelling style, but it doesn’t work terribly well here.

Out of the Mouths of Babes continues to develop Worrell’s character – at the start he’s still somewhat emotionally fragile (MacIntyre wonders whether he should have returned at all) but seems to regain his equilibrium as the story progresses.  Most notably, we see how he and Liz form a bond with Alan.

For the first time we also start to probe a little deeper into Liz’s character as she relates the story about how she received a commendation for bravery – but since it concerned the death of her colleague it’s a bitter-sweet remembrance.  There’s another of the series’ action-packed sequences at the conclusion of the episode as the gang – via a forklift truck – force their way into the secure secret location where Worrell and Liz are guarding Alan.  Not much of a secret location then ….

The relative youth of the gang has already been stated, but it’s not been possible to really register this as they’ve been masked in their few, fleeting appearances.  So the moment when Worrell corners one and pulls off his mask only to reveal a child not much older than Alan is a suitably jarring moment.

Although it clips along at a decent pace, not allowing the gang a voice is a problem as is the pre-credits sequence which shows Alan observing the murder.  Since the murderer was masked, how exactly could Alan have identified him?  This is another puzzling part of the story which I’d hope would be addressed, but alas never was.

Dusan Mesic (Anton Lesser) is a Bosnian-Serb leader who has come to London in order to participate in the ongoing peace talks.  Worrell is assigned to be his close protection agent, but he’s thrown into a spin when terrorists kidnap his wife, Pat (Kate Fenwick), and daughter, Gemma (Laura Harling).

They plan to assassinate Mesic shortly after he leaves a memorial service held aboard HMS Belfast.  If Worrell leaves enough space for the sniper to take a shot, then his wife and child will be released unharmed – which leaves Worrell with an impossible dilemma, his family or his duty?

Although we’re given a little background about Mesic, both from the man himself and the pair – Ivan (Boris Boscovic) and Marija (Yolanda Vazquez) – holding Pat and Gemma hostage, he’s not the focus of the episode.  Mesic maintains that he wasn’t responsible for the massacre in his home village whilst Ivan and Marija are convinced that he is.  Both Ivan and Marija lost their own children (later discovered in a mass grave) which answers Pat’s question as to how they could threaten a seven year old child like Gemma.  We do learn that Mesic is a skilled and charming politician, but it’s left to the audience to decide whether he personally had blood on his hands.

In many ways, Mesic simply exists in order to provide Worrell with a moral dilemma.  After he’s received the call from Ivan, we see him visibly sag – can he really go through the day pretending nothing has happened, or will he have confide in someone?  The tension is unresolved for a few minutes, but eventually he does speak to MacIntyre.  This then allows the narrative to be split in three directions – Worrell returns to guard Mesic, MacIntyre heads off to locate the sniper’s position whilst Liz and a number of others monitor Pat’s house

Once again, it’s Pertwee who dominates proceedings as events play out to their bleak conclusion.  The sniper is caught and killed before he can make an attempt on Mesic’s life, but when Liz and the others storm the house, Pat is killed in the crossfire.  It’s a jarring moment which causes both Worrell and Liz to reflect on the choices they’ve made.

Liz blames herself for Pat’s death, but then so does Worrell.  The ending, as Worrell comforts a distressed Gemma (reliving her mother’s death), is as downbeat a moment as you could hope for.  Worrell did the right thing professionally, but the personal damage has been immense.

Broadcast a year after the pilot, A Choice of Evils was an arresting way to open the series proper.  It increases Worrell’s emotional baggage and it’ll be interesting to see how this is dealt with as the series progresses.