Magnum Opus (1)

College Dean Phil Beskin is found bludgeoned to death with a rock in local woodland, and Lewis and Hathaway are called in to a scene that is about to get much worse. The team realises early that three more murders are to follow, which turns an investigation into a race. Somewhere in the dead man's life is the answer to a sequence of killings that has not finished happening. A rock, of all weapons, in woodland that should have been peaceful.

Alongside the urgency runs a quieter, more personal thread. Hathaway is struggling with his father's illness, beginning the difficult search to find out who his father was before dementia took hold. The grief and the case sit side by side, and the episode lets them inform each other without forcing the connection. Lewis, as ever, keeps one eye on the murders and one on his partner.

But the warning of three more murders turns the episode into a countdown, and the show handles the urgency without sacrificing its usual methodical pace. The scenes between Hathaway and his father carry a different kind of tension, memory dissolving in real time, and the two threads give the hour its unusual weight.

Colin Dexter and Chris Murray wrote it, and Matthew Evans directed. Martin Wenner plays Phil Beskin, Honeysuckle Weeks is Carina Beskin, Daniel Flynn plays Jay Fennell, Stephen Boxer takes Wouter Eisler, Syreeta Kumar plays Annapurna Kinneson, Wil Johnson is Dax Kinneson, Sally Scott plays Nell Hathaway, Jaygann Ayeh takes Nate Hedesan and Isabella Laughland plays Gina Doran. Laurence Fox and Kevin Whately carry the centre of it.

The ensemble does strong work around the regulars, every face in the college holding a piece of the puzzle.

The double engine of the episode, an active killer and a father fading away, gives it an unusual weight for an opening chapter. Hathaway's search for his father's earlier self is handled without sentimentality, and it shadows everything else. The killer is still out there, and the next move belongs to him.