Maureen has her hands full at home and can't take care of her father William, who may be suffering from Alzheimer's. Her brothers - Alun, an alcoholic trumpet player, and John, an insensitive businessman - don't really want to help. William, a lifelong socialist, feels angry and resentful towards the British government which has abandoned him in his old age. Having been persuaded by his children to buy a council house in the booming 80s, he discovers that this selfsame government, which made such a virtue of home ownership some ten years earlier, now expects him to sell the property in order to pay for his care. Isolated in old age, Williams secretly decides to put into action a plan to get back at the system.
A young girl is found brutally murdered in a small seaside town. The police are baffled; the town's inhabitants are panic-stricken. A serial killer is on the loose, and as yet more horrific murders take place, the search for clues becomes a desperate race against time. A tense psychological thriller with a chilling climax, this television movie introduced the charismatic, dedicated Welsh detective Noel Bain (Philip Madoc), a man with a passion for defending the innocent and an infallible instinct which the sharpest criminal minds cannot match. Also starring Hywel Bennett as Doctor Lewis, the feature-length drama won a BAFTA Cymru award and initiated the highly acclaimed, darkly authentic crime series which ran between 1997 and 2004.