Dead Giveaway

A boy staggers home from the youth club after boxing practice, misses his footing, and drowns in a creek. His father is called in to identify the body, and when the police drive him home they find his wife slumped in the hallway. Dr. Stephen Andrews has a look and delivers the verdict: both of them died of rat poisoning. All of a sudden the grieving husband is the man of the hour, and suspicion lands on him like a dropped weight. But the drowning looks like a terrible accident until the poison shows up, and then the accident starts to look arranged.

The other stories circling the case are the shop where the victims bought their food, run by a married couple, and a mother-and-son pair of antique dealers running a scam on an old woman, their relationship charged with something you do not want to think about too closely. It is a lot of thread for one episode, and the show keeps all of it moving without letting any of it go slack.

Glenn Chandler wrote it, Alan Macmillan directed. Mark McManus is DCI Jim Taggart and James MacPherson is DS Mike Jardine, with Anne Raitt as Dolly Armstrong and Martyn Hesford as Roy Armstrong. John Grillo is Tibor Meray, James Cosmo is Victor Baird, Matt Costello is Brian Baird and Kathryn Howden is Pauline Baird, with Iain Anders as Supt. Jack McVitie and Robert Robertson as Dr. Stephen Andrews.

The rat poisoning is the sort of detail that stays with you, and the episode knows it. It is a nasty, careful piece of television about what grief does to a family and what suspicion does to a man. The husband carries the weight of both, and watching him do it is the best reason to stay. Nobody in it is having a good week, which is exactly the tone this show was built for.