One for Sorrow (2)

The second half of the story starts in grim fashion, with a body discovered in a well, and it brings complications beyond the identification. Lewis has a new boss to answer to in Chief Superintendent Moody, and the remains in the water turn out to be connected to the murder of the young artist Talika Desai. From there the leads scatter across an unexpectedly wide map of modern life.

The investigation takes the team into social media, the drug trade, taxidermy, alternative art and the lives of the homeless East European community in Oxford. It is a sprawling case, the fragments refusing to connect at first: an artist's death, a body in a well, a trade in substances, an underground art scene. Hathaway and his colleagues have to hold all the pieces together and find the point where they finally link up.

But the well adds a note of old-fashioned horror to a very modern case, and the contrast keeps the episode off-balance in the right way. The team's patience with the most fragile witnesses is one of the show's quiet strengths, and it pays off here as the fragments finally begin to fit.

Colin Dexter and Helen Jenkins wrote it, and Nicholas Laughland directed. Finn Cole plays Ollie Tedman, Steve Pemberton is Ian Tedman, Helen Schlesinger plays Vivienne Tedman, Ralf Little takes Sean Wilkinson, Andreea Paduraru plays Jenny March, Emma Cunniffe is Bryony Willet, Nicholas Jones plays Philip Hathaway, Sally Scott takes Nell Hathaway and Doreen Mantle appears as Joan. Laurence Fox leads, with Kevin Whately, Angela Griffin and Clare Holman in support.

The episode makes a virtue of its sprawl, arguing that modern crime rarely stays inside neat boundaries. The well, the art, the drugs and the streets all turn out to be one story seen from different angles. The pieces do finally knit together, and the resolution gives Talika's death the weight the first part promised it deserved.