Whom the Gods Would Destroy

A middle-aged Oxford graduate is found murdered, and the investigation does not stay on the street for long. But before Lewis and Hathaway are halfway through the paperwork, the case is pointing up the university's own ladder, towards someone senior enough that the enquiry starts treading carefully. Somewhere in the college's past sits a secret that somebody has spent a good many years keeping buried.

The trail leads to former students who are doing a poor job of hiding something deadly. People whose pasts are not settled keep turning up in the witnesses' chairs, and every interview seems to shift the ground a little more. The victim's death, it becomes clear, was about keeping a long-held truth buried. Lewis and Hathaway push through the polite surfaces of academic life, which is where the show is at its happiest.

There is a particular charge in watching an enquiry circle a senior figure, the politeness getting thinner with every interview. Nobody says the word cover-up out loud, but it hangs in the room. Lewis has dealt with powerful men before; he simply prefers to do it slowly.

Colin Dexter and Daniel Boyle wrote the script, and Marc Jobst directed. The supporting cast gives the mystery its texture: Sasha Behar as Catherine Linn, Richard Lintern as Sefton Linn, Crispin Redman as Dean Greely, Sian Thomas as Ingrid Nielson, Adrian Rawlins as Harry Bundrick and Richard Dillane as Theodore Platt. Clare Holman's Dr Hobson and Rebecca Front's Chief Superintendent Innocent are on hand, and Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox hold the centre as Lewis and Hathaway.

The episode works because it remembers that the most dangerous secrets in Oxford are the ones whispered in lecture halls rather than shouted on the street. The murder itself is grim enough, but it is the buried history that keeps the attention. When the answer finally comes, it has been waiting a very long time to be found.