Hard Man

The Clyde shipyard is not a place you expect to find a murder. The body is discovered mangled, and at first it looks like one of those industrial accidents that make the safety inspectors wince: machinery, a shipyard, a man in the wrong place. Shipyards have always been dangerous, and that is exactly what made the scene so easy to stage. But the pathologist's findings come back and they don't fit the story. The victim was already dead before the accident, which means the accident itself was theatre, staged to hide a killing.

Burke and the team have to work backwards from a scene designed to look random. The shipyard gives the episode its grey, hard-bitten atmosphere, and the workforce around it supplies the usual mix of witnesses who saw nothing and men who know more than they're saying. Every one of them has an alibi, and every alibi sounds rehearsed. The dockside has its own code, and it doesn't include helping the police.

Glenn Chandler and Michael Jenner wrote it, Ian Madden directed. Alex Norton is DCI Matt Burke, with Blythe Duff's DS Jackie Reid, John Michie's DI Robbie Ross and Colin McCredie's DC Stuart Fraser. Tamara Kennedy plays Sheila Crombie, Shauna Macdonald is Helen McCabe, Kenneth Bryans is Thomas McCabe and Owen Gorman plays Iain Wilson. Graham De Banzie is the pathologist, and Jake D'Arcy turns up with the gloriously Glaswegian name of Wisnae Me McGhee.

It's a satisfying start to the series in a quiet way. No fireworks, just careful observation and a scene that slowly gives up its lies. A body that was dead before it was wrecked is a nasty trick to build an episode on, and the show plays it straight. Somewhere between the autopsy table and the dockside, a perfectly arranged accident starts to look exactly like what it is.