New Life

A scientist blows up in his car the moment he arrives in Glasgow to address a medical conference. It's a spectacular way to start an episode, and at first the investigation heads where you'd expect: he had opponents, plenty of them, and his research made him enemies. But the more the team looks, the more people emerge within the scientific community who stood to gain from his death, and the motive gets murkier rather than clearer. The conference he was due to address goes on without him, which feels like the episode's quietest cruelty.

Running alongside is the frenzied stabbing of Hasan Osman, a Kurdish minicab driver, and the two cases put the department under strain from different directions. Two very different murders, two very different sets of pressures, and one detective who would rather be left to do the job. There's friction at desk level too. DS Hannah Fairchild arrives with ambitions on Burke's seat, and Reid doesn't hide her irritation at being upstaged. When Fairchild starts talking about race-hate crimes before a motive has been established, Burke bristles at having the investigation steered by politics rather than evidence.

Glenn Chandler and Robert Fraser wrote it, Andy Goddard directed. Alex Norton is DCI Matt Burke, Blythe Duff is DS Jackie Reid, John Michie is DI Robbie Ross, Colin McCredie is DC Stuart Fraser, and Tamara Kennedy plays Sheila Crombie. Jenny Ryan is Tara Fisher, Matthew Pidgeon plays Alistair Greig, Hugh Ross is William Moyles, Tony Donaldson plays Dylan Ferguson and John McQuiston is Cameron Walton.

It's an episode that keeps two fires burning at once, and the departmental friction is half the fun. Burke's annoyance at being lectured on the politics of crime before the facts are in is a recognisably human flash of temper, and the show does those very well. A car bomb is a blunt instrument; the sharper weapon here is ambition, and it's sitting in the same office.