Grass Widows

Grass Widows has no crime at its centre, only a pile of unpaid bills. Doreen, going through The Grand's accounts, finds several belonging to a man who has since died. Instead of writing them off, she goes with Ken and Harry to see his widow, Meg Lucie, and finds a woman who is not coping with the garden, the money or the loss.

The three of them do what they can. Ken and Harry set about the overgrown garden while Doreen works through Meg's books. It is odd-job work in the most literal sense, and for a while the episode is content to show three decent people tidying up after a death.

Then the accounts tell Doreen something she did not want to know. The dead man had been having an affair, and he had been conducting it while staying at The Grand. The question of the episode becomes whether Meg should be told. The answer they reach is that she should not. They keep the secret, and Harry, characteristically, falls for the widow himself. She chooses to sell up and leave the area.

The secondary story is harder-edged. The old porter retires, and Harry takes on Hanif Kurtha, played by Gordon Warnecke in his first appearance. He also hires a barman, Lionel Blakey, whose racist remarks offend both Hanif and the hotel's Asian guests. Harry spends the episode trying to find a way to sack him, and is spared the job when Blakey resigns after an argument.

The writer is Anthony Minghella, who went on to write for Inspector Morse and to write and direct Truly, Madly, Deeply, and the script is a reminder of how good the writers were whom Boon attracted. Ian Knox directs. Barbara Ewing plays Meg, and the episode marks the last appearance of Bill Gavin's porter, Nick.

The strength of the episode is that it trusts a small story. There is no villain to catch, and the dramatic decision is a decision to stay silent, which places the moral weight on Doreen rather than on Ken. It is one of the gentlest hours in the run, and the better for not reaching for a twist.

The Blakey subplot is less satisfying. Racism at the bar is a serious matter, and having the problem resolve itself through the barman's own departure lets Harry, and the episode, off lightly. It belongs to its period, when such material often appeared as a workplace inconvenience rather than as something to be confronted.

Even so, Grass Widows shows what the series could do when it set the detective plot aside. The title covers both women in the story, the widow and the wife who never knew, and it is the second of them, kept in ignorance by people who mean well, who lingers.