Scherzo

May 1971, and a cab driver who owed a large debt to a colleague is found dead in his taxi. The early enquiries point at local grievance, and the trail promptly leads the team somewhere they never expected: a nudist colony, where the guests are making the most of the spring sunshine. It is the kind of detour the show excels at.

The investigation widens as the murders keep coming: a priest, and then the master of Strange's Masonic lodge. Together the deaths point to a blue movie outfit operating out of London's Soho, and Morse follows the threads down there. It is his professional success that resolves the case, identifying the man responsible for all three killings. The personal cost is another matter. At home he has received a guest who reminds him of a past he would sooner forget, and the visit has knocked something loose. After the arrests, Morse starts to retreat from the people closest to him, and the episode leaves him set on a course of wilful self-destruction.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Ian Aryeh directed. Anton Lesser is Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright, with Lucy Aarden as Alison Appleby, Nicholas Shaw as Baz Appleby, Fraser James as Clarry Haynes, Lottie Tolhurst as Lynn Parry, Andrew Woodall as Major Jones, Arthur Sylense as Del Grady, Ian Hallard as Brian Frussell, Kirsty Oswald as Patty Grady, and Shadrach Agozino as Lee Timothy.

The nudist colony sequence is the episode's most memorable image, and the show plays it with a straight face that makes it funnier. The Soho blue movie trail gives the case a seediness that contrasts with the spring sunshine of the opening, and the murders of the priest and the lodge master pull Strange personally into the inquiry, which the episode uses well.

A tangled affair that pairs the sharp procedural work of a London crime case with the quieter struggle of a man losing his grip on everyone who cares about him.