Echoes of the Dead

A woman drowns in her bathtub, and the death looks like something out of a true crime book. That turns out to be the point. It is the first in a series of copycat murders, each one imitating an infamous killing from the past, and Barnaby and Jones have to find someone whose imagination runs on old headlines before the list gets any longer. Copycat killers give a detective one head start: the pattern is already written down. The bathtub is the first scene, and it sets the tone: an ordinary domestic moment gone wrong.

The copycat angle gives the episode an enjoyably gruesome shape: every new body is a reference, and each crime scene reads like a quotation from an old headline. Sarah Barnaby appears alongside her husband as the case presses in, and the people drawn into the inquiry include Jo Starling, Bernard and Yvonne Flack, David Orchard, Malcolm Merryman and Fran Carter, a community starting to wonder which of them has been taking notes. Dr Bullard keeps the forensics moving, and the whole thing has the grim feeling of a race against the killer's reading list.

Peter Hammond and Caroline Graham wrote it, and Nicholas Laughland directed. Neil Dudgeon and Jason Hughes head the cast, with Fiona Dolman, Sarah Smart, Ron Cook, Adrian Rawlins, Melanie Kilburn, Andrew Buckley and Daisy Haggard in support.

And there is a particular horror to murder as tribute act, which the episode leans into without overplaying the gothic. The past crimes are famous enough that the village can half-recognise them, which makes the whole business feel closer and nastier than a stranger's work would. By the end, the morbid fascination with old violence has curdled into something the history books would rather not claim. It is a cold sort of mystery, and all the more effective for it.