The Quality of Mercy

Richard Scott is a rising star of Oxford student theatre, killed with a prop dagger just before the opening of The Merchant of Venice. It is the kind of death that comes wrapped in dramatic irony, a stabbing staged as fiction that turns out to be all too real. Lewis and Hathaway take the case, and Lewis in particular finds himself drawn into the sordid details of the victim's life.

The dead man, it emerges, was not the popular figure his reputation suggested. The investigation moves through the egos and grievances of an amateur dramatic community, where ambition runs high and kindness is in shorter supply. Sally, Phil Beaumont, Simon Monkford, Graham Wilkinson, Duffy, Emma Golding, Isabel Dawson, Barham Rezvani: the suspects are many and the sympathy is thin on the ground. Lewis gets personally entangled in the case, which is never a good sign for his peace of mind.

But a community devoted to pretending is the worst place to hide a motive. Everyone in the company has a version of the evening, and none of the versions match. Lewis has to sit through the performances and find the one actor who was not acting, and the episode makes that search quietly gripping.

Colin Dexter and Alan Plater wrote it, and Bille Eltringham directed. Daniel Sharman plays Richard Scott, Jo Herbert is Sally, Bryan Dick plays Phil Beaumont, Ronan Vibert takes Simon Monkford, Shaughan Seymour plays Graham Wilkinson, Aled Pedrick is Duffy, Daisy Lewis plays Emma Golding, Abby Ford takes Isabel Dawson and Tariq Jordan plays Barham Rezvani. Kevin Whately carries the episode as Lewis.

The theatrical setting gives the show room to play with pretence and performance, and the murder sits neatly inside that theme. A premiere is the perfect place to hide a killing, all that artifice and applause. The episode knows its setting and uses it well, down to the last curtain call.