Old Crimes, New Times

Wycliffe starts this one under a pile of pressures. The press is on his back, an internal investigation has him in the spotlight, and his superiors are doing nothing to help. DCC Stevens looks determined to prove the old man is past it. Then an old case resurfaces, and the pile gets higher. It's a hard week to be a methodical man.

The trouble begins with Tully, a grinning teenage yob who gets away with murder in the most literal sense. Sergeant Noble's failure to follow procedure hands the judge no choice but a mistrial, and the inquiry that follows demotes Noble. It's the sort of small procedural error that makes you want to shout at the telly, and the show knows it.

Then Stevens orders DI Lane to reopen an old murder case, and Wycliffe watches the lesson land: be careful, be very careful, or the technicalities will eat you. He becomes obsessive about dotting every i. Whether Stevens means it as a test or a trap, the reopened case teaches its lesson. The outcome leaves a nasty taste even so, though at least Tully gets what's coming to him. And that matters, because it lets Wycliffe atone for not fully helping the victim's family the first time round.

Written by W.J. Burley and Arthur McKenzie, directed by Graeme Harper. Jack Shepherd as Det. Supt. Wycliffe, with Jim Norton as Owens, Neil Maskell as Tully, Jimmy Yuill as DI Kersey, Alan Perrin as Noble, Helen Masters as DI Lane, Geoffrey Bayldon as the Judge, Jackie Kabler as Lindsay Collins, John D. Collins as Armstrong and Geoffrey Drew as Crimmens.

By the end, circumstances have made Wycliffe's decision for him: he stays a policeman. The episode lets him earn it, which is more than the enquiry board would have given him. That's the quiet version of a happy ending, and it suits him.