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December 1965, and an Oxford don is dead in what looks like a hit-and-run. The victim had been at odds with his peers over the sale of college-owned land to a development company, with the town council somewhere in the middle of it all. Morse, still on general duties and studying for his sergeant's exam, picks up the pieces of the dead man's professional life.

Thursday has his own ghost to deal with. Vic Kasper, an East London gangster and an old enemy, turns up in Oxford, and Thursday is immediately convinced Kasper has a hand in the case. The appearance reignites a personal feud that has clearly been waiting years for an excuse. You watch him try to keep it professional, and you watch him fail.

And then there is Morse's own journey, the quiet one that runs underneath all the Oxford business. He goes home to Lincolnshire to visit his dying father, and the episode lets that sit right beside the detective work without forcing the connection. Not every story gets a happy ending, and the show knows it.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Colm McCarthy directed. Shaun Evans is Morse, Roger Allam is DI Fred Thursday, with Paul Venables as Prof Alistair Coke Norris, Louise Dylan as Judy Vallens, Guy Williams as Jolyon Frobisher, Lloyd McGuire as Charlie Ayres, Jamie Glover as Dr Ian Kern, Sean Rigby as PC Jim Strange, Poppy Miller as Millicent Coke Norris, and Sara Vickers as Joan Thursday.

It is also the first episode to give the Thursday household real weight. Joan's presence and Win's quiet steadiness matter here, and the domestic scenes do not feel like filler between the detective work. Lincolnshire, meanwhile, is shot with a coldness that Oxford never quite gets, and Morse looks smaller there.

It is the season finale that understands the title: everyone in it is trying to get home, and most of them are not sure they will like what they find there.