Prey

Early June 1967, and Thursday is handed a missing persons case that immediately gives him the creeps: a Danish au pair named Ingrid Hjort has vanished, and the circumstances remind him of a similar disappearance exactly four years before. Nothing about the case stays routine for long.

The search for a missing young man turns up his severed arm, which is the kind of finding that rearranges an investigation. A birdwatcher's campsite sits deserted, tent and sleeping bag shredded. Something has killed a local family's dog and their pet goat. Whatever is out there, it is not shy.

Morse gets pulled between sharply different worlds: Oxford's scientific academia, the city's vast green parks, a troubled family, and a legend said to haunt the Oxfordshire countryside. The episode works the contrast hard, structured academic life against raw wilderness, and the secrets that families keep in both.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Lawrence Gough directed. Stefanie Martini is Georgina Mortmaigne, Amy McCallum is Julia Mortmaigne, Ben Lambert is Guy Mortmaigne, and Eleanor Williams is Ingrid Hjort. Darrell D'Silva plays Geoff Craven, Rob Callender is Philip Hathaway, Milo Twomey is Dr Hector Lorenz, Peter Forbes is Hodges, Sam Coulson is Mark Bryden, and John Draycott is Turnbull.

It is also one of the show's most atmospheric hours. The Oxfordshire countryside here is not the postcard version; it is dense, green and hostile, and the episodes shot there lean into it. The severed arm and the shredded tent make for grim business, but the episode never tips into exploitation. It keeps its horrors mostly implied, which is the more effective choice, and the legend said to haunt the wilderness is deployed sparingly enough to stay spooky rather than silly.

Prey succeeds by making the setting as much a character as anyone in it, and the countryside here is properly wild. The city has never felt further away.