You're not Bruce Willis or Jackie Chan. You can't deliver a roundhouse kick in slow-mo. You have no superpowers. You are just flesh and blood. That bullet is going to kill you.

What would you have done if you were in Simon's situation?

Odds are... you'd probably have wet yourself too.

Our detectives have been trained to use guns. They hold and load and clean guns every day in the course of their work. We've even seen Simon shoot at people as part of his duty, but it's different when the gun is turned on him. You don't ‘get used to' your life being on the line.

Why Simon? Why didn't we turn a gun on Duncan or Matt or Jennifer to see how they'd react? Think back to Episode 3 when he and Jennifer were in the shoot out with Brett Semple. In the aftermath, Simon ended up sitting at the bar, drinking on his own - that was his way of dealing with it. He tries very hard to be untouched by what he witnesses in Homicide. But the strut and the jokes and the drinking are to some extent just poses to mask his own sensitivity. So I guess we felt that if we put Simon in that situation of having a gun held to his head, rather than Jen, Matt or Duncan, we'd get the response that was most human, most like how an ordinary person who doesn't deal with guns and death every day would respond. Jen, Matt and Duncan are police officers through and through - we can't imagine them ever being in any other career. But Simon is different. He's starting to feel himself being changed by the things he's experienced in Homicide and the cases he's dealt with. Will he resist, ignore it or find some way to cope with the trauma? Get the feeling from that scene in the bar at the end that for now at least, he's right on the edge of cracking. This is the beginning of an unsettling journey for Simon - there are no easy answers.

This was an ambitious episode for pretty much everyone involved and pushed the boundaries of City Homicide. It involved stunts and action sequences which equals long days for those on the production crew, stress for the budget folks and a mammoth challenge for the Director. It took our characters out of their comfort zones (see Waverley and Jarvis cooperate! For the common good!) and took some of our actors to very challenging emotional spaces. We also had a huge guest cast which, from a writing point of view, is tricky because you want to give everyone their moment within the story and there's a lot of juggling dialogue within big scenes to ensure that both the story and the characters are being well served. Plus, we had to wrangle a few hundred garden gnomes and they never take direction well...

We knew it was going to be tough from the outset - the original draft script was even more stunt-truck arena spectacular but was reined in due to budget and, you know, actually needing to shoot it within the schedule. The aim was to explore one of those classic criminal ‘big jobs'. The money one. The job to end all jobs - the one where you take your share and live out your days in Bermuda. Ruthless crims, guns blazing, gold bullion, all a bit Lock Stock if you know what I mean. How it takes a brutal sociopathic coldness, how all that ‘honour among thieves' stuff is really crap, and how career crooks actually feed off the adrenalin of the crime as much as the proceeds.

COMING UP: Ever met someone in a bar, thought they looked okay through your beer goggles, they said all the right things so you had a fling, then woke up one day and discovered they weren't quite the McDreamy you thought they were? Well, we've been there, anyway. Jennifer's been there too. Now it's coming back to bite her.
The Creative Team, CITY HOMICIDE