Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things

Oxford's last all-female college is throwing a reunion party, a fond farewell to one of its most popular professors. The nostalgia curdles quickly when a guest is found murdered. Lewis suspects the killing reaches back a decade, to an attack at the same building that he investigated in an earlier life, and the suspicion gives the whole evening a second, darker layer.

He turns to his former DS, Alison McLennan, for help, and together they work through the secrets held by the women gathered in the hall. Freya Carlisle, Pauline Turrill, Poppy Toynton, Diana Ellerby: the old classmates circle each other with the particular wariness of people who share history they would rather forget. Just when the case looks like it might settle into a pattern, two more bodies turn up, and the reunion becomes something far more sinister than a walk down memory lane.

But the murder pulls old rivalries to the surface, and Lewis, who investigated the earlier attack, finds himself re-reading a case he thought he had closed. His former DS McLennan knows the terrain too, which helps and complicates in equal measure. The reunion setting gives the episode a bittersweet undertow, all those women who were young together meeting again over a body.

Colin Dexter and Russell Lewis wrote it, and Nicholas Renton directed. Zoe Telford plays Freya Carlisle, Melanie Kilburn is Pauline Turrill, Kathryn O'Reilly plays Poppy Toynton, Juliet Stevenson takes Diana Ellerby, Shannon Tarbet plays Samantha Coyle, Joanne Pearce is Marion Ferber, Hattie Morahan plays Ruth Brooks and Stephanie Street takes Lakshmi Eyre. Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox lead, with the college providing the atmosphere.

There is something quietly chilling about murder among old friends, all those shared memories turned into evidence. The episode leans into the idea that the ivy hides more than it decorates, and the reunion setting gives every smile a subtext. The dead professor's farewell party ends up revealing more about the living than anyone planned.