Ride

March 1967, and Morse is a man trying to decide if he still has a job he wants. He has been exonerated after his last case, but he spent time in prison along the way, and the experience has left him wondering what comes next. He has moved into an isolated lakefront cottage and taken up with wealthy friends from his Oxford days, among them the unhappy millionaire Joss Bixby.

At a funfair on Cowley Green, a young woman named Jeannie Hearne is spirited away into the night. Her body is found in the countryside the next morning, and Inspector Thursday's investigation turns up a connection to Bixby. Then Bixby's body is found floating in the lake, and the next day Bixby turns up alive. Somewhere in that impossible sequence, Morse finds his answer: his future is as a detective, and the solution to it all lies back at the funfair where Jeannie disappeared.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Sandra Goldbacher directed. David Oakes plays Joss Bixby, Meghan Treadway is Jeannie Hearne, Anton Lesser is Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright, and Nick Sampson is the Chief Constable. Crystal Leaity plays Roselle Brawton, Caroline O'Neill is Win Thursday, Vincent Riotta is Harry Rose, Lewis Rainer is Albert Potter, Louis Maskell is Roddy Farthingale, and Hilton McRae is The Great Zambezi.

The fairground setting is used properly, all lights and noise and people pretending to be braver than they are. Morse's friends from Oxford, the wealthy ones he has retreated among, are drawn with a light satirical touch, and the lake cottage gives the episode a rare chance to show him alone with his thoughts. It is a slow-burn opener, and the show knows it.

A missing-person case wrapped around Morse's own professional crisis makes for a curious season opener, and it lands with a quiet confidence. The fairground is a good place for a man to remember who he is.