Six couples arrive at out of term Chaucer College for a quiz weekend with a five grand prize. One of the contestants,womanizing know-all Ethan Croft,is murdered and another,Robyn Strong, is an old flame of his, disappointed he failed to recognize her. Ethan was a brilliant linguist but he was sacked from the college years earlier after an affair with a student, now married to another quizzer,whilst Eve,Robyn's quiz partner, is the next victim,after she has been heard arguing with Ethan. Passion, however, is not the motive, the killer being one whose guilty secret was exposed by Ethan's language skills over a past business transaction - with at least two suspects in the frame.

One Halloween, Ligiea Willard, stem-cell researcher and ex-roommate of Laura Hobson, is killed on her way to a reunion with Laura and another old friend named Ellen Jacoby. Her work attracted protests, and she was about to go public on shady practices at her institute. Psychic Ursula Van Tressell senses the killing and exorcises a house where the three women once lived at its owners' request. The next day, a resident is found slain, and a message on the fridge urges to find Mary Gwilliam, who was also murdered after trying to phone Laura. Mary was a nurse at a mental hospital where another of Laura's roommates--and boyfriend--died. After an unsuccessful attempt to kill Ellen, Lewis, her boyfriend, realizes that Laura has not been honest with him.

At a reunion at all female college Lady Matilda's,Poppy Toynton,bossy housemate of principal Diana Ellerby,is murdered.Years earlier Lewis had visited the same college when fifteen-year old Chloe Brooks,visiting her student sister Ruth,had been attacked,supposably by Ruth's American boyfriend Jud Havelock,who disappeared. Chloe went into a coma from which she has only recently recovered but has little recall of that night's events. Lewis visits Ali McLennan,a retired colleague who worked on the Havelock case but she has no leads for him. Then she too is murdered and Lewis discovers that she was blackmailing Poppy for killing Jud. Poppy was also responsible for a hate campaign against several of her former student contemporaries,whose lives suffered as a result.

An American bishop attending a multi-denominational meeting at the heavily Catholic St. Gerard's College dies after drinking poisoned wine but the CCTV footage at her hotel shows that the cowled figure delivering the wine probably intended it for retired policeman Barry Winter,who is also murdered. Father Moreno Mancini is stepping down as college head and the candidates to replace him include staunchly Catholic Brother Blackmore,open-minded Professor Pinnock and free-thinking new broom Caroline Hope,partner of ex-con turned author Al Darrow. The fourth candidate Jeremy Swain becomes the next victim,a note declaring Wild Justice pinned to his chest. Outright rivalry to be Father Mancini's successor is ruled out when it is revealed that one of the candidates committed a murder as a child and was given a new name after serving their sentence. It seems that a relative of the victim has tracked them down and is seeking their own wild justice.

Andrea De Ritter, founder of an organization that supports gifted children, is murdered after making a presentation to Zoe Suskin, only fifteen but an Oxford student. That night Andrea had resisted the advances of young student Elmo Woodeson as well as sending a copy of the autobiography of former spy mistress Dame Grace Orde to Zoe's publisher father Leon. She had added inside the book "Who Killed Mary? See Chapter 8." Both Leon and Elmo are killed shortly after and Zoe's tutor Donald Voss is poisoned though not fatally. Suskin had punched Liam Cullen, Andrea's lover, wrongly believing he was having an affair with his wife Judith following a text message to her and indeed sexual affairs, with Andrea at their hub, would seem to motivate the killings.

A botanist accidentally unearths the body of a recently buried professor who was fixated upon solving a seemingly impossible riddle by Lewis Carroll. The victim had a long-standing rivalry with his brother - giving Lewis and Hathaway an obvious suspect - but the case is hindered by the mind games of two students who seem intent on causing trouble in their quest to gain admittance to a mysterious club.

Nick and Honey Addams return home to find their baby-sitter, Jess Lake, murdered. She was tied to a bed and indeed often posed for bondage and fetish shots for photographer Marion Hammond. She also worked in a university lab with her boyfriend Gideon's father Dr. Massey, who is divorced from his unfeeling wife Stanza. Honey admits that Nick does not have an alibi but he seems to have no link to the next victim, Jess's house mate Silas, whose corpse is also arranged in the style of one of Marion's photos. Lewis finds himself tracking a killer who is a seemingly respectable citizen but who has a split personality rendering them an obsessive.

American academic Paul Yelland faces accusations of racism when he presents his theory on Criminal Dangerousness to an Oxford college and is later found murdered. Married professors Anne and Robert Fraser claim they invited him to raise their department's profile and Robert,who is having an affair with student Nina, points Lewis towards Myra Bennett's anti-fascist group. Yelland also dealt in antiques and had angered two clients with a forgery and furthermore turned out to be the father of a staff member,whose mother he deserted when pregnant. Then Nina is killed after Anne has discovered the affair. Lewis must not only expose a killer whose motive goes back many years but battle with tooth-ache in the light of his fear of dentists.

When an Oxford psychic is murdered Lewis and Hathaway are soon on the case and one of the first things they learn is that he wasn't a psychic at all! He was a student researching and attempting to debunk people's spiritual beliefs who was acting as a psychic to study the sort of people who when to see them… and taking their money of course. Working out who did it won't be easy as there are plenty of motives; it could be his professor who was involved in a shady government contract, the professional psychic who had uncovered a fraud, his wife who feared he was having an affair or somebody who felt betrayed when they learnt he was a fraud. The method of murder is strange too he was injected with a horse tranquiliser. Inevitably before the case is solved there will be another death and one of our protagonists will find himself in real danger.

After seven years of ducking the question, Lewis and Hobson are embarking on a relationship, though the detective has a new puzzle to solve. An elderly don, Richard Seager, is struck by a classic car on the night of his release from prison; before dying, however, he mysteriously scratches the number '500' into the paintwork. Lewis must contend with Seager's wife, who is convinced that the sister of her husband's victim is the guilty party.

Thirteen years after Lewis' first successful arrest as a Detective Inspector, the forensics have been called into question and the case reopened for appeal. Lewis fears the worst, but nothing can prepare him for the resumption of the original murders with the original weapon. Did he arrest an innocent man? With Lewis’ reputation in jeopardy, Hathaway and Maddox race to catch the killer.

A new boss arrives at Oxfordshire Police, and he begins to question Lewis' role as a consultant. After an exhibition of anthropomorphic taxidermy, the body of a young avant-garde artist is found. Lewis, Hathaway and Maddox must delve into the worlds of social media, drugs, taxidermy, alternative art and the homeless East European community. Meanwhile, Hathaway confronts his father and sister, whom he does not have a good relationship with.

A summer’s day in Oxford is screwed apart when a parcel bomb explodes. The team are called in to investigate, but the victim is a womanizer, having been known to have had numerous affairs with younger women. With his six-month trip to New Zealand with Hobson on the horizon, Lewis is in a race against time to save his career and relationship.

Lewis attends a book launch for a fantasy novel penned by prodigious young research fellow Dorian Crane, with whose adoptive mother, Ginny, Robbie's boss Jean is trying to match-make him. Later that night a Czech hotel worker Marina is found murdered. Professor Deering, the uncle of Dorian's fiancee and muse, Alice, confesses to having seen Marina on a foreign website and paid for her to come to Oxford, finding her work. However, as a supposed gay man, he is keen to hush up his sex life with her. Robbie believes that Marina was killed in mistake for Alice and then Dorian is also murdered, in order to preserve a secret well beyond Robbie's imagination.

At first the murders of Reg Chapman, a handy man at the Bodleian Library and gambling addict, and Nell Buckley, a popular Art student, seem unrelated. However, it transpires that Chapmen stole parchment from the library upon which Nell and another student persuaded Philip, a brilliant, autistic young painter, to innocently forge letters by the poet Shelley for the international collectors' market. When both victims,for different reasons, threatened to expose the mastermind behind the scam, they were killed.

Lady Hugh, the intolerant Bible-fanatic president of Oxford's Mayfield college, turns against anything gay. Shortly after the popular a nd decent student Will McEwan shoots himself in the head in St. Mark's church after waving a revolver at Reverend Francis King, who is himself found tortuously murdered by a hot poker in the head the next day. The link between both victims is the Garden, a pious society offering Christian answers to youngsters' contemporary question -- its emblem being a Phoenix, which both Will's suicide note that says, "I lost my way between Gethsemane and Calvary," and a message on King's door hat says, "Life born of fire," refer to. Lewis's partner, Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, was a friend of Will's in school and again at university, but his brutally gay-bashing father Henry McEwan apparently repudiates Will posthumously finding out...

When lonely feminist lecturer Miranda Thornton is found dead after a video she submitted to a dating agency is viciously made public on a scurrilous website,the first conclusion is suicide. But,with her answer phone removed and finger prints wiped,foul play is suspected. Miranda opposed property developer David Connelly buying land belonging to her college and had been visited,via the website by unhappily married journalist Francis Mitchell, though he states that Miranda was dead when he visited her. Embittered ex-student Sebastian Dromgoole admits to posting the video but Hathaway is guilt-ridden after Dromgoole's girlfriend,whom he had asked to find out more information,is killed. Having found themselves on the website Lewis and Hathaway find that,contrary to claims,their principal suspects have known each other for two decades.

Tyneside ship-builder Joe Maddison lost his faith in the trenches at the Somme in 1916. Now that World War Two has begun he is too old to enlist alongside his son and son-in-law and is also in a reserved occupation so, after his wife Polly has left him for a sailor,he joins the Home Guard with his friends,Marxist Eddie and cynical,wise-cracking Harry.Harry's anti-authoritarian attitude causes problems with Mr. Simpson,the company commander,and Joe leads the men out on strike after Harry is expelled. However,after he has dealt with an unexploded bomb he is acclaimed a hero,and,along with his friends, reinstated,being promoted to corporal.He also meets widow Selina who brings him out of his shell but Polly returns,with the sailor's child,seeking a reconciliation, a request which splits the family. Come 1945 and the war is ending but Joe still has his personal conflict to resolve.

The adventures of a gang of British workmen abroad. Combines black and white humour with moments of drama, poignancy and drunkenness. In series 1, the lads head to Germany seeking work, and are thrown together by virtue of shared nationality and a run-down wooden hut. The story follows the lads' relationships with women, Germans and each other, and their attempts at passing the time away from home, saving money and ordering food in a German curry house. The series ends with new employment legislation forcing some of the Brits having to choose between the UK and their new-found pleasures abroad. Two years later the gang are reunited for a second series, in which they travel to Wolverhampton to rebuild both the "magnificent seven" and Barry's home for his impending marriage. A further offer of work sees the lads head to a Derbyshire stately home in need of refurbishment. Here they fall foul of an irritable pub landlord, suspicious locals, a less than enlightened employer and the Inland Revenue. Finally, they are packed off to Spain as illegal workers for Tyneside villain Ally Fraser, and they fall under the unwelcome spotlight of tabloid publicity. Despite this, they still manage to indulge in some serious drinking practice AND complete the building work. Written by Mike Cryan

Lewis returns to Oxford after several years absence and is reluctantly assigned by his new boss, DCS Innocent, to the murder of an Oxford mathematics student who was shot while participating in a sleep study. The key-code used to access the sleep lab was assigned to a fellow maths student, Daniel Griffin, but Daniel's math tutor has provided him with an alibi. Daniel is a maladjusted young man who will soon inherit his father's automotive empire. He is disruptive and has no respect for his uncle who now heads the company. The future of the company however rests on an impending deal with Japanese investors who insist that family unity is all important at this time. When two other murder occurs, Lewis must decipher a cryptic clue left in an old case file by his former boss, Chief Inspector Morse.