In Camera

Robbie Ross has planned a romantic weekend away with Eve Hamilton, and the mood is spoiled in the most direct way possible: the body of a young man, a photographic assistant, turns up at their hideaway. The DI's private life and his working life collide on the doorstep. It's not the weekend Robbie ordered, and it puts him in the awkward position of investigating a crime at his own romantic getaway, with the woman he's with watching every move.

But the case doesn't stay contained. More deaths follow, and Robbie begins to wonder whether Eve is as innocent as she seems, and whether their meeting was coincidence at all. His own past starts to resurface while he investigates, and the episode is careful never to say how much of it is memory and how much is current danger. The hints that Robbie's history may be linked to the present killings stay alive without ever being confirmed, which is exactly the right way to play them.

John Brown and Glenn Chandler wrote it, Ian Madden directed. John Michie's Ross is very much the centre of this one, with Blythe Duff's Jackie Reid, Alex Norton's Burke and Colin McCredie's Stuart Fraser supporting, and Lesley Harcourt's Gemma Kerr in the background. Jenny Ryan plays Eve Hamilton, Vanya Eadie is Natasha Cameron, Eilidh Fraser appears as Deborah Strang, John Straiton as Tony Strang and Andrea Gibb as DCI Henderson.

A romantic weekend interrupted by a corpse is as old as detective fiction, and Taggart plays it straight. The hideaway setting gives the show a chance to work with a smaller cast and a quieter atmosphere than usual. The episode runs on the quiet dread of a man realising the woman beside him may be a stranger, and that dread is what lingers longest. The ending lands with a thud rather than a bang, which suits the story.