Something to Hide

The ninth and final series opens in France, with Bergerac playing at being a gentleman farmer and failing at it. He is helping Danielle and her father Albert at the chateau, but the work does not fulfil him, and when Danielle's cousin Alain Nicolet invites them to a fashion show and casino in Aix, Bergerac goes along gratefully. The evening ends in murder: Alain's top model Denise flees, a gunshot rings out, and Alain is found holding the weapon over the body of Etienne Bardet, a shop owner who bought his clothes. Denise's brother Gerard, her admirer Crouzil, and a business debt that would bankrupt the house all circle the crime.

Cyril Williams' script, directed by Tony Dow, is a story about the past coming back — for Alain, whose borrowed money has turned his backer into a predator; and for the series, which is spending its final year looking at consequences. Bergerac, a private citizen now, helps Alain because Danielle asks him to, and the investigation takes him through the fashion world's small cruelties: the debt that was to be cancelled if Alain handed Denise over, the brother who was fired for unconventional bookkeeping, the admirer who sent expensive gifts. The answer, when it comes, is the one the episode has been building: Crouzil, the infatuated backer, killed Bardet to frame Alain and take what he could not buy.

Back in Jersey, the Bureau is under new management — Inspector Victor Deffand, a stickler for rules and tidiness, running the station with a whiteboard and an iron will. Willy has failed his sergeant's exams; Ben is hoping for the vacancy; and the series is quietly preparing its ending by changing everything. Hungerford, dropping in unannounced, is given a few minutes and told Jim is better off out of it.

It is a strong, workmanlike opener that re-establishes Bergerac's new life and the old world he left — the chateau, the Bureau, the two poles of the final season. Jack Watling's Alain and David de Keyser's Crouzil give the French story weight, and the series makes clear that Bergerac's exile will not be a quiet one. A solid start to the last year.