Neverland

December 1966, and a boy with a brutal father is reported missing from his home. Before anyone can get a grip on that, the body of a journalist turns up on a railway line, and within days an escaped convict with only a month of his sentence left to run is found dead nearby. Three disasters, one thread.

The thread leads to Blenheim Vale, a disused correctional facility for boys in Kidlington, due to be redeveloped as the new headquarters of the Thames Valley Police, the force that will swallow Oxford City Police and Oxfordshire Constabulary when they merge. Thursday and Morse dig into the place and find the past does not stay buried: a property developer, corruption in high places, abuse that was quietly allowed, and police evidence missing from Morse's own last three cases.

The closer they get, the worse the institution looks. This is an episode about the compromises a force makes to survive, and it does not let anyone off lightly. It ends with Morse in jail and Thursday shot, which tells you exactly how the show feels about clean endings.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Geoffrey Sax directed. Roger Allam is DI Fred Thursday, Shaun Evans is DC Endeavour Morse. Louis Ashbourne Serkis plays Tommy Cork, Andrew Gower is Nicholas Myers, Oliver Lansley is Benny Topling, Martin Hancock is 'Nosey' Parker, Oliver Coleman is Henry Portmore, and Sarah Beck Mather is Hilary Portmore.

The Blenheim Vale material gives the show its spine for the next several seasons, and this is where it bites hardest. There is a particular cruelty in the way the episode uses the redevelopment plans: the building that should have been a place of correction is being smoothed over into headquarters, and the truth with it. It is the series' angriest hour so far.

Grim, deliberate, and pointed: a forgotten school for boys becomes a mirror held up to the forces themselves, and nobody comes out of it looking away.