Station Under Investigation: Amberley Road
Mo needs all the help she can get after her cover is blown while investigating a hostile police station.
Provides examples of:
- Anti-Villain: Hawker cops to participating in the petty thefts because he's mortgaged to the hilt and just wants his son to be able to have a few nice things.
- Blatant Lies:
- Mo comes across a couple of officers in the station canteen trying to get their notes to match up about a suspect's actions.
- Tony lies to Deakin about his relationship with Jenny being "ancient history" when he tells him about Jenny's name coming up in the Carswell investigation.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Mo puts on a local accent to ring up Amberley Road from a payphone so they can pick Harry up.
- Candlelit Bath: Tony and Jenny take a bath together, which is when Jenny first tries to feel out if CIB might start investigating her involvement in the case.
- Connected All Along: We learn in this episode that Mo was Jenny's tutor-constable.
- Coincidental Broadcast: Michael Carswell's statement to the press just happens to be on TV in Jenny's flat. DAC Dunning's interview with a journalist about the case can be overheard while Harry and Deakin hang out in a pool hall.
- Da Chief: DAC Dunning is trying to make a name for himself as a squeaky-clean candidate for Commissioner, which means more pressure on Tony to investigate the Carswell case. Once he gets promoted to a more senior position, the heat
- Establishing Shot: The episode opens with a shot of main entrance at the Old Bailey to set up the ongoing storyline about the Carswell case.
- Fall Guy: Once he's caught, Chris cops to robbing drunks but says he doesn't want to get landed with the blame for all the robberies or all the other dodgy stuff that happened at Amberley Road.
- Frame-Up Carswell tells Tony and Harry about how the police falsely reported that he confessed to manslaughter in the back of a panda car. Carswell points out that if he was smart enough not to say anything in his taped interview until he spoke to his brief, why would he spill the beans in the back of the car on the way to the station?
- Obviously Evil: Deakin admits that undercover ops are generally a bad idea when it comes to investigating police officers, but that he couldn't resist using Tony to investigate Mulberry Street because he just looks like a bent copper.
- Hidden Depths: At one point, Mo hints to the troops at Amberley Road that she's got her own stories about what she did during the miners' strike, but she doesn't elaborate.
- How Did You Get It?: Amberley Road is under investigation because there have been reports that the officers lift more stolen property from burglaries on their patch than the people they arrest.
- The Infiltration: Mo goes undercover as the new Collator at Amberley Road to investigate the complaints about stolen property.
- Media Scrum: There's a horde of journalists waiting for Michael Carswell outside the Old Bailey after he has his conviction overturned.
- Mouthing the Profanity
- Police Brutality: While Mo and PC Hawker are talking the station car park, they see two other officers get into an altercation with a man they're trying to get out of the back of the van. Mo runs in to help them restrain the man while Hawker hits him with his truncheon.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Subverted. DAC Dunning is scoping out a possible assignment provincial force, but it's all part of his long-term plan to become Commissioner of the Met.
- Sex for Services: Jenny tries her luck with Mo in an effort to find out if CIB are likely to investigate her, but Mo doesn't take the bait.
- Shout-Out:
- The cops at Amberley Road arrest a drunk who stumbles out of a police van singing "I Just Called to Say I Love You".
- "It's the way he tells them" is a reference to the catchphrase of 1970s stand-up comedian, Frank Carson.
- Jen asks if she's got the proverbial black spot because Mo won't tell her about what Tony's up to with Amberley Road.
- "Not a lot of people know that" is a
Beam Me Up, Scotty! attributed to Michael Caine. - The music hall song Sue mentions and that the episode takes its title from is "Ask a P'liceman" by James Fawn.
- Title Drop: Sue and Tony discuss the origin of the idea that you can always ask a policeman for the time. Sue says that it comes from a music hall song, but Tony says that it's because cops always used to nick watches from the drunks they arrested.
- Uriah Gambit: The troops at Amberley Road decide that Mo is asking too many questions. When they're out at a local fair and have to form a cordon in some woodland to apprehend some suspected thieves, they deliberately isolate Mo from the rest of the team and deliberately don't respond to her requests for backup, which results in her getting the shit kicked out of her by the suspects.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Part of Mo's cover story at Amberley Road is that she's on light duties due to a recent injury. Presumably this is to give her more opportunity to scope out the goings-on at the station than she would have if she was out on the beat.
