Number of the Beast

The Beast of Bodmin Moor is back, or so the locals are convinced, and there are fresh bodies to argue for it. Wycliffe and his team are called to the moor after a spate of killings, and the community has its answer ready: the black panther, supposedly escaped from a zoo years ago, is mauling its way through livestock and people alike. The paw prints tell one story; the victims tell another. But Wycliffe, who has heard this story before and never much liked it, takes the view that a convenient monster is exactly what a human murderer would want. Find the motive, he reasons, and you will find the man.

It is a theory that gets tested hard when DI Kersey heads out onto the moor on his own and fails to come back. Suddenly the folklore has teeth, and the investigation has a missing colleague at its centre. The moor itself becomes the enemy: mist, open ground, country that keeps its secrets. Wycliffe keeps his head while the village loses its, peeling the beast story back to see what it is covering.

W.J. Burley and Jonathan Rich wrote it, Michael Owen Morris directed. Aired in June 1996, it was the second episode of the third series. Kenneth Colley is Sam Peploe, Robert Vahey is Tony Goodden, Brian Miller is Harry Venning and Neil McCaul is Tom Rees. Jimmy Yuill's Kersey gets the worst of the moor, with Adam Barker, Helen Masters, Aaron Harris and Tim Wylton working the case around Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

The episode knows that superstition is more interesting than a simple alibi check. It lets the community believe what it needs to believe, then shows you what that belief is hiding. There is something quietly satisfying about a detective who trusts his own eyes over a good story. Especially when the story involves a panther. You come away half wanting the beast to be real.