Paint It Black

A café proprietor is murdered, and Maggie Forbes is on the case before the coffee goes cold, or so it feels. The killing lands her in the middle of a neighbourhood's daily life, because a café is the one place everyone passes through, and someone in that flow of regulars saw what happened. The episode is built on the routine of the place: the same faces and the same orders, with a murder sitting underneath it all. Murder in a café is murder in the open, and the show makes the most of that.

The investigation moves through the café's world, collecting fragments from Cynthia Collins, Marion Hedges, Jane Dean and a staff nurse who saw more than she first said. Steve Forbes drifts in and out of the picture, and Bob Croft gets drawn into the tangle as the team tries to assemble one coherent account of the day from a dozen partial ones. The café is a stage of sorts, where gossip passes for conversation and every alibi sounds rehearsed. It's a contained, low-key procedural, and the show trusts the setting to do the work of atmosphere. There's a nice discipline to the writing: every clue is earned, and none of them announce themselves.

Kenneth Ware and Terence Feely wrote it, Nic Phillips directed. Jill Gascoine is Maggie Forbes, with William Marlowe's Russell, Derek Thompson's Fenton and Brian Gwaspari's Croft alongside her. Nigel Rathbone plays Steve Forbes, Gaylie Runciman is Cynthia Collins, Sara Mason plays Marion Hedges, Tammi Jacobs is Jane Dean, Lyndel Rowe plays the staff nurse and Nick Brimble is Edwards.

The title promises something grim, and the episode delivers in its own quiet way. But the murder is only the start. The real work is in the small talk, which is where the truth usually hides in a case like this. It's a murder that stays rooted in its own street, and that's where its power is.