Master of the Moor: Part Two

Part two tightens the screw on Stephen Whalby. He has found the bodies of two women on the moor, which is the sort of discovery that makes a man with his reputation look worse, and now even his wife questions his innocence. The person who knows him best is no longer sure, and the doubt spreads outward from there. Det. Insp. Manciple's suspicions, fed by Stephen's obvious passion for the moor where the women died, harden into something close to certainty.

The personal wreckage builds alongside the case. Stephen's mother reappears after a twenty-year absence, and her sudden return sends him searching the moor for answers in a way he has never done before. The neglected Lyn, his wife, is driven into increasingly precarious situations as the danger closes in, and the moor starts to feel less like scenery and more like a participant in what is happening. Every path Stephen walks, every hollow he knows from childhood, takes on a new and uncomfortable significance.

Colin Firth carries the hour with his customary stillness, and Emma Croft's Lyn, George Costigan's Manciple, Robert Urquhart's Dadda Whalby, John Michie's Nick, Linda Spurrier's psychiatrist, Stephanie Buttle's Joanne, Peter Gilmore's Frank Malm and Ingrid Lacey's newspaper reporter fill the frame. Trevor Preston and Ruth Rendell shared the writing, and Marc Evans directed. The second part aired on the 9th of September 1994, and the danger circling Lyn gives the middle chapter its momentum while Stephen searches the moor.

The episode is about the way suspicion poisons the people around a suspect as much as the suspect himself. Stephen's mother returns, his wife drifts, the detective circles, and the moor holds its ground. The question of who killed the women is still open, and the hour ends with Stephen's world coming apart at the edges while the bodies keep accumulating.