Paddy Considine is the weary DS Gabe Waters, running a chain of police informers to track down terrorist plotters. As he tells a newbie, you use them and drop them. Show them no loyalty.
Cheeky youngster Raza Shar (Nabhaan Rizwan) comes on the radar as a potential informant. He supplied some pills on a night out where a woman to overdosed. It is a first offence but he is looking at doing time. Waters comes to his aid but there will be a price to pay.
We know this as the episode opened with a gunman attacking customers in a coffee shop before we went back a year.
Informer takes a rather sideways look at Muslims in London. Immigrants, second generation. From an early scene where a woman explains to Raza a photo of young radicals that she has exhibited. A figure dressed like a Muslim preacher handing out incendiary literature to passers by. Raza sees himself in the picture and mentions that the supposed preacher works in a takeaway, he was handing out flyers for his place of work.
There are a lot of characters who pop up in this opener, I am presuming they will have a part to play in later episodes such as a rabble rouser in the mosque who looks like Hagrid. He turns out to be another informer for Waters.
We know it will get darker, Shar will be out of his depth and is Waters as aloof as he makes out to be regarding his informers?
Considine was excellent. Rizwan was an easy loveable rogue, someone who is street smart but this may not be enough for him.