Reputation

Five years after Morse died, Lewis comes home. He has been working cases in the British Virgin Islands, and the return to Oxford is meant to be a quiet settling back into life, but he is pulled into police business before he has properly unpacked. The body is that of an American college student. The man waiting to work the case with him is DS James Hathaway, vastly younger than Lewis and easily the more bookish of the two.

But it does not take long for the enquiry to reach backwards. One of the suspects had past dealings with the late Inspector Morse, and suddenly a fresh murder is carrying the weight of the old man's history. The investigation winds through Oxford's academic set: Jessica and Tom Pollock, Regan Peverill, the Griffon family, with Bernard Beech and Mr Tanigaki hovering around the edges. Everyone has an opinion about the dead student. Nobody has a straight answer.

The episode is also a quiet study in two men learning to share a room. Hathaway's learning runs in a different direction from Lewis's, and their first conversations have the careful politeness of people working out where the edges are. The murder gives them a reason to keep talking.

Colin Dexter, Russell Lewis and Stephen Churchett wrote it, and Bill Anderson directed. The guest list does serious work: Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Jessica Pollock, Danny Webb as Tom Pollock, Jemma Redgrave as Trudi Griffon, Charlie Cox as Danny Griffon, Jack Ellis as Rex Griffon, Sophie Winkleman as Regan Peverill, Colin Starkey as Bernard Beech and Dennis Matsuki as Mr Tanigaki. Kevin Whately carries the title role, with Laurence Fox as his new partner.

As a first outing it is a confident one. The show would spend years refining the pairing, but the ingredients are all here: Oxford, two detectives who have not yet learned each other's rhythms, and a murder that refuses to stay in the present. Lewis has come home to a city that keeps its secrets close, and this case is only the first of them.