As the fourth episode of Sherwood begins, Jacob Harris (Don Gilet) goes golfing with Amy Whitstable (Kelly Harrison). Scott Rowley (Adam Hugill) shoots an arrow at them that sticks into their golf bag. Then, Amy gets an arrow through her chest. Carl (Neil Ashton) tries to escape using the golf cart. While Andy (Adeel Akhtar) hides in the woods, Neel (Bally Gill) pleads with the cops not to kill him. DI Kevin Salisbury (Robert Glenister) wonders why Scott would fire an arrow into his dad’s train. Neel suggests that is the reason his father snapped. Kevin questions whether Andy could’ve had something to do with the undercover, but Neel doesn’t think so. Neel wants to look in his eyes again and find out why. Andy cries while contemplating eating berries in the woods.

Chief Constable Fraser (Phaldut Shamra) tells DCS Ian St Clair (David Morrissey) that it is time to push the button and get more help because the search area is too big. Ian doesn’t want to bring in the Met, but Fraser doesn’t think they have any other choice. He wants Ian to stand next to him and tell everyone everything is okay while burying his personal feelings. Ian goes back to DI Taylor (Andrea Lowe) and DS Cleaver (Terence Maynard) to tell them about the Met coming to assist. He says Scott is prepared to stay out in the woods for a long time while Andy is improvising. He is sorry to admit that they need assistance from the Met. As he tells them about the new generation of Met officers, they begin arriving by bus. He tells Kevin he needs to reassure people because they’re not going to be pleased about the Met coming up.

He has organized a mini-town hall at the primary school to talk to them. Kevin needs to do it because it is his force and he should represent them. Kevin remembers what happened last time while Ian instructs him to tell everyone that it’ll be different this time. Fred Rowley (Kevin Doyle) looks from the doorway as a large group of police walks down the street. Julie Jackson (Lesley Manville) and Leonard Gibson (Charles Dale) find out about the police as well. At the school, Jenny Harris (Nadine Marshall) is surprised to see Kevin at the school. She isn’t happy that he is going to be speaking there. Daphne Sparrow (Lorraine Ashbourne) interrupts their conversation to say Kevin wrongfully arrested her son and husband. During the town hall, Kevin tells them that his force is joining with theirs to catch the suspects.

He is asked about the London police hiding a spy in their town back then. He says he can’t comment on that, but Leonard says it is true and they can read about it online. Dean (Sean Gilder) quickly refutes that by saying you can read anything online. Leonard says the spy was passing false evidence against Gary. Cinderella (Safia Oakley-Green) tells Julie that someone else has been shot while showing her the article on her phone. Cleaver and Ian arrive at the golf course and learn Amy is a businesswoman who runs a chain of hotels. Ian learns that Jacob was involved. He tells Jacob that he’ll call Jenny and get her to meet him at the hospital. Mickey Sparrow (Philip Jackson) complains about the town becoming the police capital of the country. Rory (Perry Fitzpatrick) tells them about the golfers.

Ronan (Bill Jones) worries that they’ll say they trained Scott since people will know that he used to come here. Mickey says he trained himself on their archery range and they can’t take responsibility for everything. Rory admits he did them a favor since Gary had torched their gear. He reveals he got to know Scott who was into computers and stuff. He only taught him some hacks and sourced him some hardware and viruses. Mickey isn’t happy that they could source that back to them. Rory tells Mickey that he was on Gary’s list and could be the one spying for the police. Mickey quickly denies it while saying he came here because his old man dragged the whole family here. He is trying to protect the better life he made for his sons while Rory says the same thing. As Rory begins talking about doing things his way, Mickey slams him to the ground.

He tells him that he doesn’t get it. When Mickey gets up, he asks Rory to come with him. While they’re alone, Daphne tries to find out what is going on with Ronan. He is worried that she’ll get cross when she learns about the girl so she tells him to stand up for himself. He tells her that it is Cinderella Jackson. Ronan speculates that Cindy is worried what people might think about where he comes from because he knows what goes on here. Daphne believes he is trying to tell her that he is ashamed of what they do. She hugs him before telling him to wait here. Ian tells Kevin that they’ve got to get him today and get the Met out of there. Kevin says they’ve managed to find everyone who is camping except for one pair of backpacks.

Kevin is asked to interview Jacob since Ian can’t. Scott watches the police using binoculars. He marks off the location on his map. Ian visits Julie to look at the Robbie Platt profile on the PlayStation. She explains that he must’ve typed it into her grandson’s thing. Julie shows Ian a newspaper clipping that Gary had because it has the same name on it. Both say they remember that night. Although Ian says no at first, he eventually agrees to stay for tea. They sit down and watch a gameshow about picking the answer that nobody else would come up with, but Ian doesn’t get much time for television. Julie tries to explain it to him. Before Ian leaves, he tells Julie to look after herself. Kevin goes to the hospital to get an official statement from Jacob who learns that he saw Jenny at the school earlier.

He tells Jacob that they’ve stemmed Amy’s bleeding and they suspect that any internal damage will be limited. Jacob doesn’t think he was aiming at anyone in particular since the one that hit Amy deflected off the golf cart. He also says they usually play golf together around this time every week. Jacob doesn’t think Scott would’ve known that and couldn’t have followed him from home because he was in Sheffield last night. Kevin asks whether they drove in together since Amy didn’t have a car in the car park. Jacob admits that he picked up Amy on the way from his hotel. They had to leave her house early since they reached the golf course around 7 AM. Jacob says they left her house around 6:15. Kevin asks if that means he checked out of his hotel in Sheffield around 5:30 AM. Jacob asks for a minute with Jenny so Kevin leaves.

Daphne goes to Julie’s house to tell her that Cindy and Ronan are seeing each other. Ronan doesn’t think he can see her because of what he thinks they’ll think of him. Cindy doesn’t think she can see him because of what Julie will think and what she thinks of the Sparrows. Julie says she doesn’t think anything of them. She was perfectly content with their families being out of each other’s orbits. Daphne reminds her that it wasn’t always like that. Julie tells her that her family has always been painted differently too. She mentions they were angry strikers in a town full of scabs. Daphne says Cindy has her permission to come around and see Ronan once in a while. The ball is in Julie’s court. Ian confronts Kevin about asking Jacob where he slept and who he was with. Kevin claims he was establishing what routine he kept, but Ian doesn’t believe that.

Ian believes this was about her and admits he knew Kevin would do this. Kevin says he is taking a moment to stay calm because it feels like he is being accused of gross unprofessionalism. He claims he accidentally and without meaning to exposed his friend’s affair. Kevin apologizes, but says it was Jacob’s responsibility and not his. He says they need to get ahead of Scott if he is searching for this spy for whatever reason. Kevin argues they need to find out who it is and start talking to people who know more about this than they do. In the woods, Andy begins talking to himself about the possibility of going back. He contemplates handing himself over to the police and explaining what happened since it was an accident. Ian and Kevin meet with Jennifer Hale (Lindsay Duncan) of the NUM.

Ian admits they were expecting something different from the NUM. As they go inside, Jennifer calls herself a retired solicitor although the Home Office would call her an activist. She works on the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign pro-bono. It is an inquiry into undercover policing in which the NUM are core participants. She confirms that the NUM believes the government and police put undercover officers into the mining communities. She does too because the SDS was an elite top-secret unit operating in Scotland Yard from 1968 all the way to 2008. 40 million pages of intelligence were gathered. Kevin says all police forces use undercover operatives. Jennifer agrees although they use them for organized crime instead of political groups that the government didn’t like.

She believes it was different because they documented the lives of law-abiding citizens. The whole thing was only uncovered after the controversy over sexual misconduct because spy cops formed relationships with their targets. Jennifer argues that what the women went through was rape by the state. Ian says he’ll need to find out who the spy is since they think the killer is after them. Although Jennifer agrees, she doesn’t think he is going to get help from the Met. The inquiry granted anonymity to nearly all ex-spy cops if they cooperated. Jennifer confesses that they want their testimonies and need their cooperation. She says they’re an old country with so much past which means there are a lot of mistakes. Jennifer believes sweeping it all under the carpet makes it worse instead of learning from it.

When the Thatcher government’s Cabinet papers were released under the 30-year rule, she needed a stiff drink. It is all in the Ridley Report in black and white. She mentions a future Tory Secretary of State. They wanted the strike to change the political landscape away from collectivism to deregulated market forces. They needed a war and to provoke a strike in nationalized industries. They picked coal and won. If they used spies to stir up trouble, you never had a chance. Jennifer says Hillsborough, the miners’ strike, phone hacking, Stephen Lawrence, and some of the most unsavory aspects of British policing that they’re dragging out of the darkness and into the light all demand justice. At the base, Ian says she told them that the spy could be anyone who joined the community before or during the strike.

Kevin mentions the people that Scott was tracking online before saying an obvious candidate is Fred Rowley who was relocated from Silverdale to Bentinck in ’83. That could be his cover story. Ian says they also have Andy Fisher, but Kevin says he is a lifelong resident of the village. Kevin knows Ian thinks his judgment is clouded although Jacob fits the requirements since he moved here around that time. Ian says he wasn’t undercover since he was in uniform when he trained with him. Ian says a lot of people moved here around that time because of the coalfield. It is how he met his wife whose mother worked for the coal board. Although Kevin doesn’t want to put her name down, he makes it clear that everyone is a suspect. Later that night, Julie visits Fred and Cathy (Claire Rushbrook) to tell them that Scott came into their house.

She admits she doesn’t know what she is doing here so she asks one of them to offer her a drink. While Ian sleeps, Kevin looks up Jacob’s record and finds several traffic incidents. When he tries to look up Helen St Clair, he finds that the file is restricted. Scott notices two campers nearby and decides to get a closer look. Andy creeps around a tree and moves toward the camp when the campers leave. He grabs the food they were cooking and eats it before drinking their water. He hears it when Scott loads an arrow. Andy hears the camper’s phone so he grabs it as the campers return to the campsite. He runs at them in hopes of scaring them away, but they come after him. The campers only stop when Scott shoots an arrow into a tree in front of them. Ian checks Kevin’s computer and finds that he was trying to research Helen. Andy calls his own phone to leave a message for Neel because he wants to come back and accept what is coming.

He tells them that they can track his phone. Scott knocks him out from behind and takes the phone apart. Meanwhile, Kevin tells Ian that Gary circled the guy named Robbie Platt which is the same name on the gaming console. He wonders if someone from his lot would remember who Robbie Platt was. He thinks it is time to look his force in the eye and ask them. Scott drags Andy back to his camp. Commissioner Charles Dawes (Pip Torrens) questions Kevin whether this has moved beyond the boundaries of what he was supposed to achieve. Charles says the undercover would’ve been doing his job and shouldn’t get dragged back into an active investigation. Kevin just wants to see if anyone recognizes Robbie off the record. Charles identifies the man as Bill Raggett (Christopher Fairbank) and says they were in Special Operations together.

He retired 10 or 15 years ago. Kevin asks where he is. Kevin visits Bill who says he has a couple of weeks left. Bill reveals that Robbie Platt was a dead child from Peterborough he thinks. They squatted in the identities of dead kids. There were five of them in 1984 including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Blake. Kevin asks if he has been asked to speak at the inquiry. Bill asks why he would be asked since he hasn’t done anything wrong. He did the job that was asked of him, behaved himself, and came home. Bill will not be publicly dragged onto the altar of hand-wringing virtue signalers. Kevin believes one of his team did something wrong so he asks whether one of them stayed. Bill says every one of them came back before saying he should’ve seen it because they were trouble from the start. When asked who, he says Keats.

Kevin might need him to come in. Bill doesn’t want to since he’d prefer to maintain his legacy. He says no again, but Kevin admits he isn’t asking. Kevin gets a call from Helen (Clare Holman) that interrupts his conversation with Bill. She asks whether he is looking for her. While Kevin is out of the room, Bill sends a message to four other numbers saying one of them has screwed us. Helen says people have to contact her when certain questions are asked for her safety. She suspects he knows her name isn’t Helen. Helen asks whether he has talked to her husband before suggesting they should talk. Bill pulls out a gun and points it toward Kevin. He shoots himself instead. Ian arrives home as Helen gets off the phone.

 

Sherwood Review

Sherwood has some good ideas, but it might have bundled too many ideas into one episode time and again. With such a big cast, it is disappointing that this hasn’t lived up to its potential. The episode was a bit all over the place with unrealistic scenes sprinkled in. The Andy character is one of the weakest links and has been since the very beginning because it is unrealistically silly.

Andy’s actions, motives, and mannerisms aren’t good. In fact, they’re so bad that it is nearly impossible to take the character seriously. Adeel Akhtar does what he can with the character, but it just isn’t good. DI Kevin Salisbury is likely the most interesting character of the bunch. The episode shifted away from the murders and focused more on the spy in town. I just can’t force myself to be interested in that aspect of the story because it seems pointless.

Now, there is a whole new storyline circling around Helen and her history. Sherwood took as many cliches as it could come up with and crammed them into an entire season. It was surprising to see that this was renewed for another season because it really wasn’t good enough and I doubt anything is going to change in the coming episodes.

Sherwood got a lot of attention for the first few seconds thanks to a disclaimer and its cast of big names, but the story and dialogue just aren’t good enough. The episode scores a 5 out of 10. Recaps of Sherwood can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work here.