Thornapple

Twelve-year-old James Fyfield has a scientific mind and a bedroom full of jars. James lives with his parents and his sister, and on the surface the household is ordinary enough. The jars hold poisons, every one manufactured by James himself from plants gathered in the family garden. His favourite is the thornapple. It is an unsettling hobby for a boy his age, and the episode lets it sit there quietly before anything goes wrong.

Then cousin Mirabel Davenport arrives with her baby. She has been rejected by her boyfriend, and James is captivated by her. Aunt June had rejected Mirabel too, until she suddenly changes her mind and puts the girl back in her good books. The reconciliation does not last. June dies, supposedly of gastric complications, and leaves Mirabel a large sum of money. James, who knows more about plants and what they can do than anyone suspects, has his doubts about the official cause of death. The episode's own summary puts it plainly: the boy collects poisons, and then he tries them out, with deadly results.

Roy MacGregor wrote it, Mary McMurray directed. Freddie Findlay plays James, with Neil Daglish as Tim Fyfield, Susan Penhaligon as Beth and Katie Havelaar Cook as Rosamund. Beth Goddard is Mirabel Davenport and Barbara Jefford is Aunt June. The rest of the cast fills out the edges: Mica Lee as Oliver, Alan Bodenham as the taxi driver, Ruth Platt as Lucy and Neil Phillips as Dent. It aired on 31 January 1997.

The pleasure of the episode is watching a domestic setting quietly turn sinister. A boy's scientific passion becomes a matter of motive and deceit, and the polite surface of family life does not survive the encounter. James's doubt is the first crack in it. For a story that begins with a child's jars of homemade poison, it stays remarkably calm until it decides not to be.