Endangered Species

The episode opens on a scene that could be comedy if it were not so grotesque: Frost answers a call for help and finds, in place of a body, a single severed leg — and a crocodile. The leg belongs to a man caught up in the illegal animal trade, and the case leads Frost into a smuggling ring trafficking exotic and endangered animals through Denton, with a pet superstore as its respectable face.

The ring's local muscle is Kevin Flannagan, a criminal who escaped prosecution for lack of evidence — until his life is endangered and he turns to Frost for help. Flannagan admits he was helping a Vietnamese smuggler, Lahn Loc, store the animals at his farm, and that when the two of them were caught skimming money, the ringleaders had Loc executed. Scotland Yard and HMRC insist Flannagan be released to lead them to his bosses; the surveillance fails; and Flannagan, encouraged by his superior Dennis Prior to leave the country, is sent off with a smuggler named Colin Edwards — an execution dressed as an escape. Frost traces his death to Prior and Edwards, who in turn turn on their boss, the superstore's owner Kenneth Shaw. Anton Lesser, all silky menace, makes Prior the episode's most dangerous animal.

The second case is pure Denton farce turned tragedy. The Harris family come home from holiday to find a naked body in their bedroom — the local art teacher, Patrick Bartley. The investigation uncovers compromising photos of a music teacher, Carol Haymarsh, and a key given to a fifteen-year-old friend of the Harrises' son, who used the house for a clandestine affair with her. When Bartley discovered the arrangement, he blackmailed Carol into sex, as he thought, the boy's house. She resisted, broke his nose, and he succumbed to a heart attack. Carol is arrested over her improper relationship with the teenager, and the episode declines to pretend the case is simple.

Endangered Species, written by Christopher Blake and directed by Roy Battersby, is the series' late-period parable: a town full of predators, human and otherwise, and a detective who keeps trying to decide which ones are worth protecting. The title is the joke — the endangered species in Denton is decency itself, and Frost, sharing his house with the trainee DC Presley who romances a WPC under his nose, is running out of places to hide it.

A late-period parable about predators human and animal, with a severed leg, a crocodile and Anton Lesser's silky menace. The title is the joke; the ending is the point. A late-period parable with teeth.