A Shot in the Dark

A body is found in the canal. The dead man was connected to the restaurant trade, and the investigation brings Crabbe into contact with people he knows professionally as well as officially. The case is one of the first series' more conventional murders, and the series handles it in a way that never loses sight of the kitchen.

The dead man's business affairs are the substance of the enquiry. There is money involved, there are people who stood to gain, and there is a set of relationships inside the catering trade that Crabbe understands better than the officers around him. The episode's method is the one the series uses throughout: the detective's knowledge of how a trade works is what makes the difference between a plausible answer and the right one.

Margaret's side of the episode is the restaurant's continuing problem with costs. Her position is unchanged from the premiere: her husband buys the best ingredients, employs people properly and charges too little, and she has to make the figures work. The marriage is presented as a genuine partnership in which the disagreement is about means rather than about ends.

The solution arrives through a piece of professional knowledge rather than through a chase or a confession. Crabbe establishes what happened and why, the case closes, and the restaurant carries on. The episode is an efficient version of the series' standard shape, and it shows how well the format worked even before it had settled into its later routines.

What the first series establishes across these episodes is the programme's temperament: no gore, no gunplay, a crime that is almost always recognisably commercial in its motive, and a detective whose competence comes from his other life. This is a solid example of that, and it is the sort of episode the later series build on.

It is also one of the earliest demonstrations that the show could carry a murder without becoming a murder series, which is the balance the programme maintained for all five of its runs.

The episode is also a useful reminder of how early the series settled on its supporting company: Cambridge is alongside Crabbe from the start, Fisher is the source of the assignment, and the restaurant's staff are already the people who will still be there in the fifth series. The episode is careful with the dead man's trade, and the series' continuing interest in how a business is run gives the case its shape rather than any interest in the killing itself.