Midnight Mystery: Dalziel and Pascoe – #4 – S02E01 – Ruling Passion – Warren Clarke, Colin Buchanan

After being kept late by “The Fat Controller”, as Ellie so bluntly puts it, Pascoe and his wife finally head out on their romantic weekend break to meet up with some old friends, only to find a house full of dead bodies and his best friend nowhere to be found. Pascoe is thrown into the middle of a complex investigation, which revels in tales of villager’s secrets, an unpublished manuscript and a suicide note left as a cover up. Meanwhile, back home, Dalziel is on the trail of a bungling burglar who urinated in a poor old lady’s kettle after robbing her most valued collectibles. The murder of an aspiring estate agent, which at first appears to be entirely unconnected, soon provides the missing piece of the puzzle. And if all else couldn’t be worse, Pascoe is smug when Ellie manages to identify the bungling burglar before Dalziel, and his promotion to inspector finally comes to fruition, with delight.