Season 02 Episode 06

The episode opens in 1948, with Sidney Chambers and Sam Milburn being ordained together and dressing in vestments for the first time, and returns to the present, late 1954. Sidney is drinking through the day, smoking, neglecting the parish and making advances to a barmaid. The Archdeacon, with the same fixed smile, tells Leonard that he could have the parish if he helps to remove Sidney, saying it is time to cut out the dead wood. Mrs Maguire visits Amanda and tells her that she took the same vow and the better days never came, and that how a marriage starts is how it ends. Amanda tries to reach her husband and is met with indifference.

Sam Milburn returns to the parish, leaves a gift at Abigail Redmond's grave and asks Sidney for forgiveness. Harding Redmond finds him and drives him off. Later, blood is found on Abigail's gravestone, and Milburn's coat, his car keys and his car are found nearby, and the search turns into a hunt for a body. The car is traced to Esther Bradley, who has been lodging Milburn at the Archdeacon's arrangement. Esther's daughter Gilly is fourteen. Sidney reads Abigail's diary again and finds that Milburn was going through the same routine with Gilly, and Gilly is found at a hotel, in a nightdress and unharmed. She tells Margaret Ward, who gets the account out of her, that Milburn left and did not come back.

Harding admits to stabbing Milburn and dumping the body, then leads the search in the wrong direction. Sidney returns to the gravestone and finds that a plant has been dug up: the rose given to Phyllis Bell by Agatha Redmond has been lifted, and the knife is buried beneath it. In a flashback, Agatha is shown stabbing Milburn. She had known Abigail was pregnant and had not helped her. Milburn is found alive in the cellar of the Redmonds' farm, bleeding. Sidney considers leaving him and then carries him out. Geordie tells Milburn to drop the charges against the Redmonds and make some amends. Leonard goes to the police with what he has found, that the Archdeacon placed a serial abuser of young girls with a family and knew what Milburn was. He refuses the Archdeacon's offer and reports him.

The last section resolves the series. Sidney preaches, the Redmonds visit Phyllis Bell, and Geordie's fiftieth birthday is held at the vicarage, where Mrs Maguire kisses Jack Chapman in front of everyone and Sidney finds Leonard weeping over Daniel Marlowe.

The finale is the strongest of the first two series because the case that has run since the opening episode ends inside a family rather than in a court, with the mother who knew her daughter was pregnant and did nothing being the one who used the knife. Sidney's decision to carry Milburn out of the cellar after considering leaving him is the character's whole position in one action, and the Archdeacon's exposure comes from the one man in the parish who has been treated as a joke. The flashback opening in 1948 is the series' best single structural choice in these two runs, because it makes the two men priests before it makes one of them a criminal.