In Sight of the Lord (1)

Series four begins in 1948, with George Western found dead in his living room and a nine-inch nail through his head. Western was a conscientious objector, which even then made a man a target of opinion. The case sat unsolved for decades until his grandson Adam turned up new evidence and ran a media campaign loud enough that reopening it became unavoidable.

Then the past stops being the past. Elderly William Davis is found nailed to the floor in exactly the same manner, in a nursing home of all places, and Grace digs out an identical killing from 1961: one Norman Taylor. Three men, three eras, one signature. The team discovers that Taylor and Western served in the same regiment during the war, so the surviving members get traced, and the hunt becomes a race; per the research notes, there's another possible victim out there and nobody knows where he is.

That's a properly grim premise, and the episode treats it with the seriousness it deserves. The nine-inch nail is a calling card that says punishment rather than robbery or passion, and the question of what these men did, or were thought to have done, hangs over everything. The period material carries real texture too: post-war Britain, rationing still on, a country pretending the fighting was over when plenty of it had just come home wearing civilian clothes.

Barbara Machin and Tony McHale wrote it, Andy Hay directed. Trevor Eve leads as Boyd with Sue Johnston's Grace Foley, Holly Aird's Frankie Wharton, Claire Goose's Amelia Silver and Wil Johnson's Spencer Jordan. Michael Byrne plays Joe Brackley, with Geoffrey Bayldon as Edward Atkinson, Clive Wood as Neil Clayton, Alibe Parsons as Carmen Davis and Kananu Kirimi as Sophie Davis.

As an opener this commits fully. A wartime regiment, a killer working across sixty years, and a victim list that may not be finished yet; part one sets the table with confidence.