Death by Misadventure

A reporter dies at a racetrack, and the official word is that it was an accident. Bulman is brought in to test that word, and the episode does what good racetrack stories do: it puts its characters in a world of spectacle and speed where nobody stands still long enough to be observed properly.

But the racing community keeps its own counsel, which is the point. Murray Smith wrote it, David Carson directed, and the mystery works because the setting works, all noise and movement, money changing hands in the gaps between races. The dead reporter had been asking questions, because reporters do, and the question of what he was about to find out gives the episode its engine. The racetrack crowd is drawn without caricature, which is harder than it looks, and the show enjoys its milieu here.

Don Henderson's Bulman moves through the paddock like a man who has never backed a horse in his life and has no intention of starting, which is exactly the right energy for a detective in a place where everyone is gambling on something. Siobhan Redmond's Lucy McGinty does the patient sifting, the interviews, the detail work that the racetrack's noise makes necessary. They make a good pair in a bad crowd, and the episode lets the racing world itself be the villain, which is a neat solution.

The verdict the episode earns is more interesting than the one the coroner would have reached. What looks like a misadventure turns out to be a story with a different ending, and the show is good at that particular trick, letting the truth arrive quietly instead of announcing it. The title turns out to be the episode's quiet joke, and the joke lands.

A solid, workmanlike hour with a strong sense of place, and the racing world is a welcome change of air.