Exit Laughing

A minor civil servant is found dead in surroundings that do not match the job title at all, and the scene is exotic enough that the team reads it as a lovers' quarrel gone wrong. Open and shut, they think. But the case has other ideas, and the truth pulls the investigation away from the obvious romance in a hurry. The death looks like passion, which is the first thing any detective learns to distrust.

The detectives spend the episode dismantling their own first impression. Russell, Barratt, Phillips and Slater all arrive expecting a domestic tragedy, and all of them are gradually persuaded otherwise. Every new statement moves the case further from where it started. The episode is a working demonstration of why open and shut is a dangerous phrase: the exotic setting and the obvious motive are there to steer the eye away from the actual story.

The new faces get their moments, Chalky White and Dave Bryant and WPC Virginia Hankie among them, and Selina De Sade is a name worth waiting for in the credits. The case keeps its secrets until the end, and the resolution rewards attention rather than guessing. Maggie lets the case breathe, and the case repays her by moving in directions nobody guessed at.

William Marlowe and Terence Feely wrote it, Gerry Mill directed. Jill Gascoine plays Maggie, with William Marlowe as Russell, Paul Moriarty as Jake Barratt, Kevin O'Shea as Peter Phillips and Michael Graham Cox as Jack Slater. Ian Thompson is Detective Constable Chalky White, Michael Cronin plays Sergeant Dave Bryant, Debbi Blythe is WPC Virginia Hankie, Wanda Ventham appears as Selina De Sade and Janette Legge plays Marjorie Drake. Every face in the cast is a familiar one from the British drama circuit, and the show wears that comfortably.

As the last episode of the series it is a decent farewell. It goes out the way it came in, with Maggie doing the work and the truth doing the surprising. The tone is right: clever, without ever showing off.