The Incident at Cooper Hill

Cooper Hill has a reputation. The lights in the sky there have been reported for years, so when a forest ranger dies strangely the night after a fresh sighting, half the village is ready to blame something from above. Paul Logue wrote the script with Caroline Graham, and Renny Rye directed, and they handle the UFO business with the right amount of straight face.

Barnaby has to keep his feet on the ground while everyone else looks up. The Campbells are the family to watch: Steve Toussaint's Victor, Tanya Fear's Orla and Michelle Collins' Nadine, each with a different theory about the lights. The Tonevs, Steve Oram's Nathan and Alison Steadman's Abigail, run the other side of the argument. Sian Webber's Veronica Ford completes the picture, and Manjinder Virk's Dr Kam Karimore brings the case back to the body, which is where it belongs. The two families have been arguing about the lights for years, which gives the police a head start on the local politics.

The episode is at its best when it keeps both explanations alive. The lights could be anything, and the show is clever enough to leave them unexplained while the human reasons for the death get properly worked over. Barnaby's impatience with the woo-woo side of things is quietly funny, and it keeps the story honest. He has seen too many earthly motives to reach for the stars. The episode keeps both feet on the ground, which is rarer than it should be.

It starts with a dead ranger and a fresh sighting, and it ends with a village that would rather believe in aliens than in itself. The answer, naturally, is a good deal closer to home.

But it is the sort of episode that works because it refuses to pick a side until it has to, and by then you are already hooked.