Patrick Malahide, currently appearing in BBC2's Middlemarch, returns as Ngaio Marsh's upper-crust 1940s detective in a special one-off film that follows on from last year's series. "He's extremely intelligent, very mercurial, very old-fashioned," says Malahide of Alleyn. "You would be foolish to make an enemy of him, even though he would never resort to bullying tactics and he'd be unfailingly polite."

Alleyn is busy investigating the discovery of a dead body in a drainage ditch outside the home of Percival Pyke Period (played by John Gielgud) in the quiet backwater of Chalfont Green.
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