Deus ex Machina (2)

The second half pays off the audacity of the first. Boyd finds the connection: the recent murder of an Iraqi, the cold case killing of a former Iraqi VIP in his own store years earlier, and a skull carried off from Sudan by British troops more than a century ago. Three things that should have nothing to do with each other turn out to be one story. There's also a college-centred Middle Eastern cult somewhere in the middle of it, which is the sort of detail this show produces with a completely straight face.

That's the gamble this two-parter makes, and part two mostly wins it. The colonial loot isn't a backdrop; it's the motive engine. Everything happening now, the murder, the hunger strike, the Foreign Office sweating over a presidential election, traces back to what British soldiers took from Omdurman and what people will do to own it, hide it or return it. Boyd gets to do his best work here, refusing to let the official version stand while everyone with a title tells him to drop it.

Trevor Eve is DSI Peter Boyd again, flanked by Sue Johnston's Dr Grace Foley and Tara Fitzgerald's Dr Eve Lockhart on the science, with Wil Johnson's DI Spencer Jordan and Félicité Du Jeu's DC Stella Goodman doing the legwork. Alex Jennings plays James Andrews, Lisa Jackson is Elaine Wilson, Polly Walker plays Catherine Braithwaite, Graham Crowden is Cyril Barrett and Houda Echouafni is Leila Jaffiri.

Nicholas Blincoe and Barbara Machin wrote it, Andy Hay directs once more, keeping the political material grounded where it could easily have gone silly.

Is it far-fetched? A bit. A Victorian skull connecting an Oxford cult to an Iraqi murder case asks for generous viewing. But the show commits, the history has genuine weight behind it, and Crowden's old man carries the imperial guilt without turning it into a lecture. A satisfying close to one of the series' stranger cases.