Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death

The Glynns looked like the kind of Penzance family nobody gossips about. Then Matthew Glynn, the rare bookseller of the family, is found murdered, and the town's assumptions die with him. This is no simple killing. Wycliffe's team soon understands that the damage inside the family is old and carefully hidden, and the murder is where it finally broke the surface.

It's a family story told in interviews, mostly. Around the dead man stand his relatives, each with a slightly different account of him and a slightly different reason to be relieved he's gone. Joseph Bennett plays David Glynn, Richard Heffer takes Maurice, and Steve Jacobs is Gerald. Gemma Jones appears as Sara Glynn, Siri Neal is Christine, and John Turner plays Matthew himself, glimpsed only in the moments the investigation allows.

Wycliffe and DI Kersey go about it the usual way: slowly, and with a patience that looks almost like boredom. There is no race against the clock here. Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe listens more than he talks, and Kevin Quarmby's Kersey is right behind him. It suits him. Helen Wycliffe, played by Lucy Fleming, has her own part in the story, and that gives the episode a quiet domestic thread running under the official one.

Pennant Roberts directed, and he keeps the tone even, letting the story widen at its own speed from a single dead bookseller to the whole family. The research notes list no writer, which is a shame, because the piece knows exactly what it's doing: a family keeps its secrets the way the coast keeps its wrecks, and murder simply brings them up with the tide.

Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death aired in the summer of 1993 as a standalone special, ahead of the regular series. The scale suits Wycliffe. He is a methodical man in a methodical town, and he lets the Glynns talk until they have talked themselves into a corner. But the satisfaction is in the watching. The episode doesn't tidy the family up, and that's to its credit.