Be warned: this is another exceedingly disturbing two-parter in the detective series that unearths old crimes. If you're at all queasy with decomposing bodies as well as blood and gore being splattered about the place (often repeated and in slow motion), you'd be well advised to steer clear.
For the rest of us, it's top-notch stuff as DS Boyd (Trevor Eve, pictured) leads his team into a baffling investigation. A badly decomposed body is discovered in a disused tunnel. There are ritual elements about the burial. The person was killed by blows to the head, his fingertips were removed and he had been scalped. Boyd's mob manages to trace the murder to a group of middle-aged men. Quite how the men are linked takes some unravelling, but it appears that they were on a self-empowerment weekend, led by a self-appointed American guru.
Naturally it's not an easy murder to solve. The body is identified as Chris Dearden, an air-conditioning salesman who went missing in 1996. It turns out that at the time of his disappearance, his wife Lucy was having an affair with a landscape gardener, Frank Monk, and they are still together. Meanwhile, Chris's 19-year-old son Jimmy refuses to accept that his father is dead, believing that he is working in Africa.
A very unpleasant tale all round, it's plain that things got seriously out of hand when the men went native on their weekend away, with shades of Lord of the Flies about it all. Certainly not what you expect when you sign up to a pub-quiz team. Paul Strange
(2000) (UK) 
(4 Star)
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