Ashes to Ashes II Episode Three on BBC One

It must be pretty unnerving to have children's TV character Morph attempting to do the old electric shock to your heart trick.

No wonder DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) spends so much of Episode Three being spaced out and flummoxed. The hunt for Episode One's cop-killer ends a little prematurely, and there's a creepy anti-vivisectionist (David Bradley) who knows far more than an ordinary man from 1982 ought. He doesn't seem to be the mystery medical man who leaves Drake flowers and cryptic messages every now and then, but for a minute it looks like he might be.

It's animal rights this week, with David Bradley as a hunger-striking animal rights activist pulling the strings of a terror campaign from behind bars. Once again, there's the old clash of techniques on display – Drake wants to talk to prisoners and analyse them, meanwhile DCI Hunt (Philip Glenister) prefers to batter information out of them. Rory Kinnear pops up as a shrink for Drake to talk to, and is unrecognisable from his characters in the new James Bond films or the National Theatre's Revenger's Tragedy last year. To be honest, it's a fairly classic story of trying to stop the bad men hurting people, with our favourite eighties coppers using their mix of modern and eighties policing to hunt down the criminals who theoretically have a decent cause to be fighting, but are a bit mental with it.

What's worth watching out for this week is the little things, the small moments that fit Episode Three into the grander scheme of Ashes to Ashes Series Two. Especially the music – as ever – and Roger Allam. Also on the acting front, Glenister – now wearing Hunt like a second skin – is gradually peeling back the layers of this man week by week; it's like watching him pick at a fascinating scab, and I mean that as a compliment. Though the series has been low on car chases so far, the music for Hunt's reckless driving is still fantastic. This week he may only be driving down a street, but Eye of the Tiger is a perfect song for the Quattro belting to the scene of an arson attack.

The music's also pretty good when Super Mac is in Hunt's office. There's a chilling note to both that and Allam's demeanour when he innocently mentions facts that threaten Hunt – or will if Super Mac doesn't get his way. Rarely is an actor so in tune with his background music. There's a curiously upbeat song to end this episode on, which is really at odds with the news that we've just had delivered, but beautifully so. If nothing else, this show excels with its soundtrack.