A Case Of Coincidence: Part One

The year is 1954, and the body of a woman has been found in the fen-land of Norfolk. For Det. Inspectors Masters and Moore, it is the start of something much larger than a single death. Four attractive women are found strangled in and around the local river, and then the free-spirited wife of a London doctor is killed while out on an extramarital assignation. Five women, all apparently by the same hand.

The investigation narrows onto a young man who becomes the principal suspect, and the episode's central question is one the title teases: is he really a serial killer, or is this something more complicated than a simple pattern of murder? The period setting gives the whole affair a properly dated texture, the sort of post-war England where a woman's movements were remarked upon and a man's alibi was his word.

Keith Barron's Inspector Masters and Ronald Pickup's Chief Inspector Moore lead the enquiry with Garry Cooper's Sergeant Holt in support. Caroline Bliss' Sarah Quin, Pip Torrens' Michael Quin, Don Henderson's Ray Brannel, Michael Fitzgerald's Edward Brannel, Ken Wynne's Frank Preston, Robin Summers' barman and Amanda Pointer's female student fill out the community around the river. Geoffrey Case wrote it, and Gavin Millar directed. It is one of the series' standalone adaptations, set at a clear distance from the usual Wexford cases, and the first half was broadcast on 22 March 1996, with the verdict on the young man left for the following week.

The episode ends with the suspect in view and the pattern still uncertain. A body in the marsh, more bodies by the river, a doctor's wife who went looking for a lover and found death: the pieces are being assembled, but the shape they make is not yet clear. Whether the young man is the answer, or merely the coincidence the title warns about, is a question for part two.