Bribery and Corruption: Part One

Nicholas Hawthorne is a young engineer, recently made redundant from the boat-building industry and out hunting for his next job. The job hunt is not his only preoccupation. There is a woman, the wife of his father's former friend, who occupies his thoughts rather more than is sensible. His fascination with her complicates his feelings, and Nicholas has no idea that she is having an affair with his father.

Then comes the nightmare, vivid enough to feel real. In it, a woman is murdered. A short time later Nicholas sits through an unsuccessful dinner date, and there he spots Julius Sorensen, the boss who laid him off, dining with a woman who is clearly not his wife. Sorensen pays for Nicholas's meal. It is a strange courtesy from the man who sacked him. The next day, calling at the office to repay the money, Nicholas sees a photograph of Sorensen's wife. She is the woman killed in his dream. That is too much for coincidence, and Nicholas decides to investigate on his own. A photograph, a nightmare and a dinner bill: the episode builds its unease out of small things.

Guy Meredith wrote it, Mike Vardy directed. James D'Arcy plays Nicholas, with Damian Zuk as his younger self at sixteen and seventeen, and Tim Woodward as Nick Hawthorne. Fiona Mollison is Emma Sorensen, Paul Freeman is Julius. Janet Dale plays Delia Myerson, Abigail Cruttenden is Annabel Lynes, Cara Konig plays Sonia, Tony Spooner is Shears, and Hugh Simon appears as the restaurant's maître d'. It aired on 17 January 1997.

The hook is the collision between a personal obsession and a genuine mystery. The photograph has joined the woman in Nicholas's dream to Sorensen's household, and the affair at the centre of it connects two families who should have nothing to do with each other. Where that leads is left hanging for part two.