Coda

Mid June 1967, and every kind of loyalty in Oxford is being tested at once. The murder of Cedric Clissold, a manager with a line in fashion, stirs up old gangland grudges, and a notorious crime family appears to be in the frame as the criminals jostle to replace their dead boss, Harry Rose. Thursday, meanwhile, is suspended for hitting an informant, which tells you how frayed things have got at the top of the force.

Morse is at the bank where Joan Thursday works, investigating a killing and a payroll robbery, when armed robbers trap everyone inside. He and Joan spend the siege trying to conceal their identities, and somewhere in that sweaty, tense stretch Morse realises he is part of someone else's plan, a scheme designed to cover up not one crime but another entirely.

It is dense material: gang rivalry, institutional pressure, hostages, a dead businessman with connections. The show holds it all in one hand and keeps the jeopardy personal, and it is always a pleasure to watch the series deal in that interwoven mesh of private and professional danger.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Oliver Blackburn directed. Shaun Evans is Morse, Roger Allam is DI Fred Thursday, and Jimmy Walker is Tommy Thompson. Tom Mothersdale plays Peter Matthews, Tom McKay is Cole Matthews, Bronson Webb is Bernie Waters, Sean Rigby is DS Jim Strange, Abigail Thaw is Dorothea Frazil, Robbie Carpenter is Paul Marlock, and Harry McEntire is Ronnie Gidderton.

The bank siege is the centrepiece, and it is a properly tense piece of staging. Watching Morse and Joan try to stay anonymous in a room full of people who might recognise either of them gives the episode a pressure the plot alone would not manage. The gangland stuff is familiar territory, but the personal stakes make it new.

A busy, bruising season finale that never loses sight of the people stuck inside its plot.