The Dead of Winter

The body of Dr Stephen Black is found on an Oxford tour bus, and the trail leads straight to Crevecoeur Hall, a sprawling estate with a particular meaning for Hathaway: his father was in service there, and Hathaway spent much of his boyhood in its shadow. That history makes the case uncomfortable from the first interview, and it only gets worse when a second body is discovered on the estate grounds.

Hathaway is not at his best here. Lewis worries that a previous case, the murder of a ten-year-old girl, has begun to eat at his partner's state of mind, and Hathaway's attention keeps drifting to Scarlett Mortmaigne, the daughter of the estate's owner. His refusal to believe the family could be involved turns into a stand-off that threatens the partnership itself. It is one of those episodes where the murder is almost secondary to the two men working it.

But the house itself becomes a character, as these estates always do in this show: generations of service and rooms full of photographs, a family that believes its name should be enough. Hathaway's own history with the place makes every interview twice as complicated as it looks.

Colin Dexter and Russell Lewis wrote it, and Bill Anderson directed. Richard Johnson plays Augustus Mortmaigne, Jonathan Bailey is Titus Mortmaigne, Nathaniel Parker takes Philip Coleman, Jonty Stephens plays Ralph Grahame, Georgia Groome is Briony Grahame, Pip Carter plays Paul Hopkiss and Alex Knight appears as the Bus Driver. Kevin Whately, Laurence Fox and Clare Holman carry the regular side, with Hobson doing her usual steady work.

The estate setting gives the episode a gothic reach, old money and older secrets under one roof. But the strongest scenes are the quiet ones between Lewis and Hathaway, where the older man tries to reach a colleague who is slipping. The case gets solved. The cost to the partnership is left to be measured over later seasons.