Legends: Alliance

 "You're allowed to enjoy it, Guy."

As per the quote... Guy's wife knows him well. He needs the excitement, the risk, all of it. And, as we hear more of Mylonas's background this episode, perhaps the two of them are more similar than either would admit- both adrenaline junkies.

Turning to Kate and Bailey, we have quite the contrast. Kate is game to take risks, Bailey more cautious, causing tension... until an everyday instance of police racism makes Kate realise what Bailey has to live with, and why he has to be cautious. Meanwhile we meet Scouser Shaun, another bored VAT man, who is sent straight undercover, all because he cares deeply about his local community.

And so our protagonists are nicely developed as characters as we explore the world into which they've been dropped, a world of constant risk, calculation, adrenaline, with occasional betrayal and murder, with twists and turns that lead Kate and Bailey to witness the forging of a new alliance between Hakan's Turks and Carter's Scousers. It's all superbly sculpted plot-wise, yet it really gets us to know the protagonists.

Even more worrying, one of the Turks seems to suspect Guy, and a white van is watching his wife and daughter at their house. The levels of risk are off the charts... but this is Customs, far wilder and riskier than the police or the spooks. This is simply gripping stuff. The drug smuggling montage at the start alone is magnificent television.

I'm loving this. 

Legends: Could You Offer More?

 "Lunch money? What are you, twelve?"

1990. It was a very different time, the early years of rave culture, and Thatcher (just!) hanging on. But it was also a time of massively increasing availability of heroin. And so we have the hard-hitting opening, with two young people, from very different class backgrounds but both with their lives ahead of them, have those very lives snuffed out.

There is, of course, a lot of cynicism in how the government of the day reacted- Alex Jennings has an excellent cameo as rightly forgotten Home Secretary David Waddington driving home this very point. Thatcher, at a low ebb, needed a success. But there's no doubting the moral urgency of snuffing out the heroin trade.

The way this is to be done, however, is on a shoestring. Ordinary civil servants from Her Majesty's Customs and Excise are to go undercover, with only a little training, no extra resources and no extra pay... which is, wow. And so we have our triumvirate who have what it takes- Bailey the VAT man (yay, he says cryptically!); Kate the vice officer, and Guy from Customs- a real person who wrote the book on which all this is based. They are the only three who make it through the rigorous selection process, which is enormous fun to behold.

It's a joy, as ever, to experience the sheer charisma of Steve Coogan as Don Clarke, the world-weary yet wise man in charge, the person who anchors all this. And, soon, we see our brave trio into action, and very real danger.

This is going to be fun. Loving the character of Mylonas...