The Draughtsman

A body has been found in Hartley, and that changes everything about the day at the station. Murder brings in the heavy machinery, including a detective from the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad, and Inspector Jean Darblay suddenly has to run the local side of an inquiry that is not entirely hers any more. A body in a town this size is a public event; everybody knows somebody who saw something.

The investigation grinds its way through the town and the fields around it. Detective Superintendent Brunskill carries the rank and the weight, Detective Sergeant Gordon Cole does the close work, and Detective Sergeant Howlett hovers at the edges. The people pulled into the net tell you what sort of place Hartley is: Farmer Arthur Dillon, a man called Stone Mason whose name sounds like a job description, and the steady procession of folk who knew the victim or knew somebody who did. For Darblay, early in her tenure, it is a lesson in sharing a crime scene with visitors who outrank her, delivered at the worst possible moment.

Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Paul Ciappessoni directed. Stephanie Turner leads as Jean Darblay, with Del Henney as Detective Sergeant Gordon Cole, John Rowe as Detective Superintendent Brunskill and David Hargreaves as Tom Darblay. David Ellison's Sergeant Beck, Noel Collins' Sergeant Parrish, Mark Drewry's PC Bentley, Norman Hartley's Detective Sergeant Howlett, Paul Luty's Farmer Dillon and Sam Davies' Stone Mason complete the roster.

The pleasure here is an old-fashioned one: watching a proper inquiry move forward one statement and one sighting at a time. The production values of 1980 add their own charm, the streets and houses of the fictional town looking genuinely lived-in rather than dressed for the camera, and the Flying Squad man's sharp suit standing out against the raincoats of the locals.

It is a contained hour, and none the worse for it. Some weeks the drama is in the grinding of the machine itself.