The lies come easily once they start, don't they?
The curry episode.
June 1970. A man is killed on the same towpath as Molly Andrews. Thursday starts patrolling the towpath at night.
An Indian takeaway delivery driver is lured to his death at the flat of a TV chef, Oberon Prince, who has gone missing. Racial tensions in Oxford rise during the run-up to the general election when an Anglo-Indian youth is fatally stabbed by a young supporter of far-right candidate Martin Gorman, whose daughter lives in the same block of flats as Prince. Morse discovers that Prince was a gambler in card games run by Gorman, and had recently won a lot of money.
Meanwhile, the Morse-Ludo-Violetta relationship develops further. Ludo tells Morse that his wife is away and invites Morse to his home, but she's there. Violetta later secretly meets Morse to rekindle their affair; he initially rebuffs her, but later succumbs to her advances.
This episodes contains examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Oberon Prince.Rosemary Prince: He could be the most tremendous fun. Right up to the sixth whisky sour.
- The Bus Came Back: Hazel Radowicz, the racist hairdresser from "Colours", returns.
- Call-Back: When Ludo comes to see him, Morse is playing an opera record which his visitor doesn't recognize. Morse tells him it's called "The Cure For Love" - the subtitle of the (fictional) opera La Sposa Del Demonio, which Morse attended in Venice at the beginning of "Oracle" ... in other words, he's listening to the opera at which he met Violetta.
- Closet Gay: Adam Sloan, who picks up on some coded signals when he encounters Oberon Prince in the restaurant, and later goes to his flat for what he hopes will be a sexual liaison. It seems to be more semi-closet, though - he's not too unwilling to tell Morse and Thursday, and he also tells them that some of his fellow wrestlers know and don't really care.
- Cold Opening: In the form of a period-style cinema advert for the Jolly Rajah, an Indian restaurant that plays a key part in this episode.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In one of his more lucid moments, Uqbah Sardar (the ailing owner of the Jolly Rajah) reflects that he should have just paid his brother Rafiq better.
- Deadpan Snarker: Fred Thursday, again.Bright: He orders an Indian meal and then butchers the man who delivers it. What is he, a lunatic of some sort?Thursday: Food critic, sir.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Laid on thick. The catchphrase of Martin Gorman's fascistic "British Movement" is "Taking It Back", which is very reminiscent of the "Take Back Control" slogan used by the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum (which took place in 2016, four years before this episode was broadcast). Taking this further, the yellow and dark blue rosettes worn by the British Movement supporters are similar to the yellow and purple rosettes worn by supporters of the right-wing anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP for short). One of Martin Gorman's cronies is called Nigel, presumably after UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
- Foreshadowing: It is briefly mentioned that Sam Thursday's regiment, seen in ''Colours", has now returned from Germany and is about to be posted to Northern Ireland. This will become a significant plot point in later series.
- Gallows Humour: Being a pathologist, Max De Bryn is a master of this, as evidenced in this episode when he's confronted with a not-quite-complete set of body parts.Max: Is this all?Strange: Enough, isn't it?Max: An elegant sufficiency, thank you, insofar as we appear to have one torso together with both legs and arms, but we are deficient to the tune of one head and the mountain range one might expect to find, as the old geographers' joke has it, at the end of a Cockney's wristies — his 'andies, Sergeant. I'll know better once I've got him laid out.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: After their bout, the wrestlers go out together for a curry.
- Headscratchers: Who is Strange trying (and failing) to cook a meal for?
- Love Triangle: Violetta, who's married to Ludo, pursues an affair with Morse. Who is also becoming friends with Ludo.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Thursday compares wrestling with opera.
- Present-Day Past: Somewhat downplayed, but when the Sardar brothers discuss their father's mental state, one of them refers to him as being "confused-dot-com". This phrase, fairly common in twenty-first century Britain (referring to the price comparison website of that name), could not possibly have existed prior to the Internet.
- Real Men Cook: Strange attempts this in order to impress an unseen lady-friend, but gives up and orders a takeaway from the Jolly Rajah instead.
- Red Herring: Adam Sloan, who actually went to Oberon Prince's flat for a sexual liaison.
- Remember the New Guy?: Win Thursday's friend Bridget has not been seen before in the show.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The episode plays out against the backdrop of the 1970 general election, in which Harold Wilson's Labour Party was unexpectedly defeated by the Conservative Party under Edward Heath.
- Scary Black Man: Johnny Simba plays up to this as part of his Heel wrestler persona.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Justified; Uqbah Sardar, the owner of the Jolly Raja, is suffering from dementia but is in denial about its impact on his memory.
- Shout-Out: A few, as ever.
- Oberon Prince was, according to Ludo, "no Robert Danvers". Robert Danvers is a celebrity chef played by Peter Sellers in the 1970 film There's a Girl in my Soup.
- Rosemary Prince tells Morse that, as far as Oberon's TV cookery show was concerned, "I was Johnnie to his Fanny". No, that's not rude - it's a reference to 60s and 70s TV cook Fanny Cradock who was often assisted by her husband Johnnie.
- Oberon Prince's TV persona is reminiscent of two Real Life celebrity chefs, Graham Kerr (a.k.a. "The Galloping Gourmet") and Keith Floyd. Although neither of them ever published a cook-book called Cooking for Seduction, which is the title of the Oberon Prince book owned by Strange.
- Bright tells Farook Sardar that he during his time in India, he was in Pankot and Chandrapore. He had previously referred to Pankot, the village in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, in "Prey". Chandrapore, meanwhile, is the fictional city in which A Passage to India is set.
- After Carl Sturgis gets released, Thursday starts following him around during his off-duty hours. This echoes Dirty Harry in which Harry Callahan relentlessly pursued "Scorpio" in his private time after the latter was released on a technicality.
- When talking about his recent holiday in France, Ludo mentions having met a man called Steve who was making a film there. It would appear that he's talking about Steve McQueen; therefore, the movie would be Le Mans.
- When Morse is in bed with Violetta, he murmurs: "Of all the opera houses in all of Venice...", a paraphrase of Humphrey Bogart's famous line in Casablanca.
- Oberon Prince is said to have a home on the Greek island of Vrakonisi. There is no such island in Real Life, but there is an island of that name in Colonel Sun.
- The similarities between the Morse-Ludo friendship and the one between the two main male characters in The Talented Mr. Ripley are alluded to with the revelation that Ludo's surname is Talenti.
- Wrestler Adam Sloan presumably got his "Danger Man" nickname from the TV show.
- An election poster suggests that the local Conservative candidate has the surname Archibald-Lake. This is the surname of the Conservative candidate in Dennis Potter's 1965 TV play Vote, Vote, Vote For Nigel Barton.
- Stealing from the Till: Rafiq Sardar stole money from his brother's restaurant on account of his being heavily in debt to Oberon Prince. Aziz, an employee at the restaurant, found out about this and gave him a chance to come clean; Rafiq, though, opted to solve his problem by killing Aziz and framing a dead Prince for the murder.
- Story Arc: The towpath killer remains at large. The police thought they'd got their man at the end of "Oracle", but they were wrong.
- Tonight in This Very Ring: Win Thursday and her friend Bridget go to the wrestling. The main attraction is the bout between Adrian "Danger Man" Sloan and Johnny Simba.
