Humphrey and Esther are called to an unlocked house where the family, Matthew and Laura Colbert and their two children, have disappeared, leaving an unfinished evening meal, television and lights on, and a car still in the driveway.

Following her personal tragedy, Martha is preparing to open her cafe but the bank refuses her loan and Humphrey has bought a houseboat without consulting her, straining their relationship and finances.

Meanwhile, Martha is thrown a financial lifeline by local vineyard owner Archie Hughes, to whom she had been previously engaged, and who becomes a junior partner in her cafe.

Humphrey misses the opening of the cafe completely to save the Colberts' lives: Matt is poised to drive off the cliff and kill his family, but only the car goes over the edge.

A man is found dead of a suspected heart attack in the middle of a newly made crop circle at North Farm with no identification and the last page of Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations hidden in his sock.

Lucy Elliot's home is burgled, and fingerprints and a boot print found at the scene lead to her ex-girlfriend Hayley Collins, who at the time of the robbery was in the police station cells.

Unable to resolve his personal problems, Humphrey leaves Shipton Abbot for a holiday on Saint Marie and a reunion with old friends Commissioner Patterson and Catherine, and meets the current police team led by DI Neville Parker.

After the train slows to enter a tunnel, the actor playing the victim is found murdered; he had been stabbed in the back but there is no blood present at the scene.

Michael Hogan of The Telegraph gave it four stars out of five, proclaiming it "superior to its mothership show" and "Charming, cheerful and just gripping enough, it was the cosy crime treat we didn't know we needed.