Breaking Point

Anne Carter comes ashore the way nobody wants to see a surfer come ashore: unconscious, in a deep coma, and clearly not the victim of a simple accident. Wycliffe takes one look at her injuries and the belongings missing from the beach and revises the obvious verdict. The sea is often blamed in these cases. It rarely deserves it.

Anne's devoted ex-boyfriend John Corliston is the first port of call, and he is in a bad way, prone to blackouts from the medication he takes. Under pressure he confesses that he may have hurt Anne without knowing it, possibly while she lay helpless. But a proper search of her things turns up heroin hidden inside her surfboard, and that sends the investigation towards Anne's employer instead. As if the case weren't tangled enough, somebody on the inside keeps feeding the press, and DI Lane, who carries the weight of the leak, looks more exposed by the day. When Anne finally wakes from her coma, most of the suspicions are confirmed. The aftermath is not tidy: her story finds its way into the local paper, and it costs Lucy her engagement.

W.J. Burley and Steve Trafford wrote it, Michael Owen Morris directed. Aired in the summer of 1995, it closed the second series. Jo-Anne Stockham is Anne, Andreya Wharry is the woman surfer, and Dominic Wallis plays Simon Granger. Naomi Wirthner's doctor and Rebecca Raybone's Nurse Avril hold the hospital side together, with Jimmy Yuill, Matthew Scurfield and Adam Barker alongside Helen Masters's Lane backing Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

What stays with you is how quickly the straightforward version falls apart. A girl washes up on a beach, and everyone calls it an accident. Then come the drugs, and behind them an employer with something to hide. The episode enjoys the mess, and so did I. Local journalism gets its knuckles rapped along the way, which is never a bad thing.