Prelude

1972, and Morse's phased return to Castle Gate coincides with another homecoming: the Oxford Concert Orchestra, back under its celebrated conductor, Sir Alexander Lermontov. The reunion is spoiled by a gruesome discovery in a college garden, and when a second tragedy hits within the orchestra itself, Morse and Thursday find themselves untangling a web of secrets around the music.

The other half of the case is pure London, transplanted. A criminal from the Smoke is brutally murdered in a derelict Oxford warehouse, and the grislier the details get, the more the pair realise they are looking at unsettling ties to a case they had both hoped was long since closed. History, it turns out, leaves loose ends on purpose.

The personal news is just as bruising. Sam Thursday is home after his release from the military prison where he was sent for going AWOL, and he has taken up heavy drinking. Morse takes him to visit Joan, and there learns that she is engaged to Strange. He takes it the way he takes most things these days: quietly, and with a drink in hand.

Russell Lewis wrote it, Shaun Evans directed. Nicholas Farrell is Sir Alexander Lermontov, James Anderson is Fergus Brathwaite, Nicholas Boulton is John Graham-Scott, Rob Ostlere is Donald Fischer, Leaphia Darko is Lindsay Trench, Imogen Daines is Mabs Portman, Tamsin Newlands is Margeaux Quincannon, Kirstin Louie is Christina Poole, and Jane Lapotaire is Madame Belasco.

The orchestra gives the episode its texture: rehearsal rooms, egos, the quiet violence of artistic ambition. Lermontov is drawn as a man of immense charm and immense weight, and the college garden discovery sets the tone early. Sam's drinking and Joan's engagement to Strange land as a one-two punch for Morse, whose face does the work the script wisely leaves unsaid.

A study in contrasts, genteel music on one side and London violence on the other, and it opens the final season on a note of reckoning.