Trial & Retribution X: Sins Of The Father (1)

The Harrogates come home and assume their daughter is in. Nobody checks. By morning Emily Harrogate is dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs, and by the time Connor and Satchell arrive, the scene has been ruined twice over — first by her mother Diedre, a compulsive cleaner who scrubbed the house before bed, then by the distraught parents moving the body to the study. It's a horribly plausible kind of disaster. Grief destroys evidence just as thoroughly as guilt does, and the episode makes you feel both possibilities at once.

The obvious reading of the family doesn't survive contact with the enquiry. The apparently happy Harrogate household turns out to be anything but, and the suspicion settles on someone Emily knew, eventually the teenage neighbour Michael Summerby, played by Andrew Lee Potts. Greg Wise is John Harrogate, Nadia Cameron-Blakey is Diedre, and Claire Bloom appears as Helen Masters.

Meanwhile Walker has troubles of his own on two fronts. At work he's fighting to keep a dangerous sociopath off parole; at home his fifteen-year-old son Richard has gone withdrawn and lost all interest in school, and when the boy is arrested, Walker takes time off to deal with it. That leaves Connor short-handed and appealing for backup that isn't coming, and the friction between them has an edge it hasn't had for a while.

The casting of Richard matters more than it looks: Benedict Smith plays him opposite David Hayman, and the father-son material gives the series' usual procedural spine a personal ache it rarely attempts. Keep an eye on Michael Fassbender too, as Douglas Nesbitt, pre-fame but unmistakable.

Lynda La Plante wrote it, Andy Hay directed, and the hour balances murder mechanics against family fallout without dropping either. The title tells you where the weight falls: what parents do, or fail to do, comes back down the stairs eventually.