Wild Oats

Someone tries to steal a skull from an archaeological dig on Agnes Currow's land. Agnes scares them off, but the damage is done: once Wycliffe gets a proper look at the bones, it is clear they are not ancient at all. Whoever this was died under thirty, and not so long ago. A dig meant for the distant past has produced a modern corpse, and that changes everything. But Agnes Currow is not the sort of woman to be easily frightened, and the robbers left with nothing for their trouble.

The identification unsettles the aristocratic Rawle family, whose name and land have carried them for generations. Their days of easy authority in the community are fading, and a skeleton with a recent date on it is the last thing they need. The trail leads to Tilly Rawle and a youthful indiscretion the family had hoped to keep buried for good. Wycliffe moves through the estate's polished rooms and its rougher corners, and every step widens the cracks in the family portrait.

W.J. Burley and Patrick Harkins wrote it, Michael Owen Morris directed. Aired in the summer of 1995, it is the seventh episode of the second series. Louise Jameson is Tilly, Rosalie Crutchley is Agnes, and Keith Thompson appears as a helicopter pilot. David Ellison's Jack Choak and Desmond McNamara's Bill Marrack round out the local colour, while Aaron Harris, Adam Barker, Richard Hicks and Helen Masters keep the police side busy behind Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

The episode is really about how a community like this one handles being handed something it would rather not see. The Rawles have built their lives on the idea that their position is permanent, and the truth sits in a box in a police lab, waiting. You watch them try to pretend it isn't there. That's the whole show in miniature: a proud family and a body that refuses to stay buried.