Adapted by Alan Plater. He keeps the mystery suitably ambiguous.
It opens with a flashback from 1973. Young Patrick Alderman is in the garden with his elderly aunt who shows him how to prune rose bushes. She suddenly dies when she thinks that Patrick might stab her.
In the present day, local tycoon Dick Elgood (Keith Barron) an old friend of Dalziel has a story to tell.
Patrick Alderman is an accountant in his company. People who have come into contact with him seem to die in bizarre accidents. The kind where someone's bad luck is his good fortune.
Patrick is moving up the corporate ladder with each new accidental death. Could it be murder in a Kind Hearts and Coronet way?
Pacoe investigates and uses his wife's car getting vandalised an excuse to get near to him.
However Pascoe finds out that other people have ulterior motives. Elgood is having an affair with Patrick's wife.
I liked how Patrick was set up as the villain. A slight weirdo with something to hide and more interested in roses.
Only the story shifts a little with other people coming into the frame. Yet there is always a question as to just how much Patrick might know of his wife's infidelity.