The Dark Horse

"The Dark Horse" brings Bergerac back to Jersey for the first proper case of his private career — a missing wife, a deadline and a syndicate deal with more players than anyone counted on. The set-up is classic Hungerford: he has put together a syndicate to buy Leighton Computer Services, but the owner, Thomas Leighton, is dragging his feet, and his wife Anne-Claire holds the other half of the signature. She is in France, visiting her brother Henri and their aging mother; the bank's man Wenslow has set a deadline; and someone, the episode quietly shows, is hoping Leighton will miss it so the company can be bought for half what the syndicate is paying.

John Milne's script, directed by Tristan DeVere Cole, is a detective story with two mysteries: where is Anne-Claire, and who is the dark horse working against the deal? Bergerac, hired at £250 a day, half paid by Hungerford and half by Leighton, works the case through the island's gossip — the hairdresser who knows everything, the affair everyone knows about, the husband who cannot see it. John Shrapnel plays Leighton with a tired, wounded dignity that keeps the audience unsure how much he knows. The subplot runs beneath: a man named Davis, arrested for breaking into Leighton's office, turns out to be someone else entirely, and the Bureau — under Deffand — is handling it badly, with Ben's promotion in the balance.

The resolution is a study in misdirection. The affair, the missing wife and the deadline all resolve into the same pattern: the company was the prize, and the people circling it were not who they seemed. Bergerac, working without a warrant and without the Bureau, solves it the way he always did — by listening to the people no one else heard, and trusting his read of a man over the file.

The episode is a solid, character-led hour that shows the final series' format taking shape: the private detective, the old friendships, the Bureau looking on from a distance. Caroline Blakiston and Michael Culver fill out the supporting ranks, and the series makes clear that Bergerac's new life will keep pulling him back to the island he left. A competent, well-made entry with a satisfyingly human resolution.