Dead Man's Chest

A fifteen-year-old gold bullion robbery comes back to life when the robbers start dying one by one. Jardine and the Maryhill team are in a race against time, and the case comes with pirates and treasure chests, secret maps to buried treasure muddying the waters. Fifteen years is long enough for the money to be hidden and the trail to go cold, and the pool of suspects is a shrinking one.

But the episode keeps asking whether they will solve the murders and find the gold before the last surviving robber is killed and buried with his secrets. It is a good engine for a mystery, because every death takes a little more of the answer with it. The team is working two problems at once, which is how the episode keeps its running time full.

The treasure-hunt trappings could easily have been silly, and the show mostly keeps them on a short leash. There is a young Billy Boyd in the cast as Jamie Holmes, a few years before Middle-earth came calling. There is a proper sense of adventure here, rare for a show that usually keeps its collar turned up against the rain. The episode enjoys its own romance without winking at the audience.

Glenn Chandler and Richard Maher wrote it, Alan Macmillan directed. James MacPherson, Blythe Duff and Colin McCredie lead, with Iain Anders as McVitie and Robert Robertson as Dr Andrews. Roy Sampson's Billy MacLean, Robert Carr's Tony Sullivan, Jon Morrison's Thomas McKenna, Eileen Nicholas's Jocelyn Holmes and Billy Boyd's Jamie Holmes fill out the case.

The bodies keep the story honest, and the buried gold keeps it fun. That is a balance Taggart does not always bother with, and it works. It is a confident season opener, happy to be a treasure hunt with bodies in it. The episode knows exactly what it is for.