Death Valley episode 1 recap: Who killed Carwyn? And why?

Death Valley is a new BBC One cop drama starring Timothy Spall as retired actor John Chapel, with Gwyneth Keyworth as his reluctant cop partner DS Janie Mallowan. Here's what happened in episode 1, and it's a bit more complicated than we imagined it would be!

We see a shot of a picturesque town. A postman with a package in his hand and a woman, we later find out is the victim's wife Danielle (Amy Griffiths), chat outside a house when they hear a gunshot, the alarmed woman runs in.

Meanwhile, on a fictional TV show, a policeman (Ghosts star Jim Howick) tells Inspector Charles Caesar, the fictional cop John Chapel plays, there's been a shooting. "I'm not in the habit of letting people get away with murder," says Caesar as he gets up from his desk. "Crime waits for no man," says Caesar smoothly as he takes his hat.

We see someone watching the TV show Caesar on their television. Turns out it’s a dead body in front of the television! The woman we saw outside comes in and screams, "Carwyn," as she finds the body slumped over a desk. We can see the victim, who we later find out is a property developer, Carwyn Rees, has a gun in their hand. The postman, also there, says he is still going to need a signature for the package!

DS Janie Mallowan is on the scene. She stops Carwyn's business partner from entering the property. Hang on, Dave Coaches has turned up. Sorry, we mean DCI Clarke (Gavin & Stacey’s Steffan Rhodri).

Janie fills her boss in about the victim, who wasn't very popular locally due to a property development. DCI Clarke is hoping it's suicide as that's "simpler" as less paperwork.

Janie inspects the body. The victim had lunch booked, but it doesn’t say who with. The TV show Caesar carries on running in the background. Janie inspects the package delivered to Carwyn. It’s a travel guide. "Who kills themselves when they’re planning a holiday?" ponders Janie.

She looks at a model of the property development and says she couldn't afford one of the house. But her colleague Baxter points out she has no children or partner and lives with her mum, so maybe she could!

Janie spots a bit of paint on the window, which she thinks is weird (bet this is crucial!). Baxter wants to turn over from Caesar, but Janie is a fan. "Caesar was the best, he had a mind that could unpick any murder," insists Janie to her sceptical colleague.

DC Evan Chaudhry is excited about the case. A young girl, we later find out is called Ava, looks at Janie's car and says blue is her favourite color despite the fact that Janie’s car is actually purple. This turns out to be crucial!

Janie notices someone watching from a window. Evan says no one knows much about the person who lives there. And who should answer the door but John Chapel! Janie loses the plot and says how much she loves him!

John quickly shuts the door. Janie continues about what a fan she is through the letterbox, and he threatens to call the police. "I am the police!" she screams.

Janie, now inside his house, starts knocking things over in her excitement. John says he assumes she’s here about Carwyn's murder, and she says they think it's suicide. John, though, insists it was murder! He says it's obvious because of Carwyn's cleaner June, who used to clean for him. June's son, he says, loves pop-up cards. At Christmas, Carwyn makes a beautiful pop-up card for June's son.

John says a man that considerate to his cleaner would never allow his body to be found by her, thus he didn’t kill himself! He says he didn’t know him but he observed the victim. He adds that a gun is too messy for Carwyn; he likes order. Janie doesn’t look convinced! "People’s actions are always consistent with their character," insists John. Adding, look at Janie and her car. She looks professional, but her car is a "skip on wheels". It’s out of character, which tells him it’s important to Janie, but it begs the question of why. She tells him to mind his own business.

She tells him she's had enough of the ramblings of a hermit and leaves. At the door, she asks him to repeat a line from his show, but he just closes the door.

At the station, Janie tells her boss that the solicitor says the wife inherits everything, and the victim was due to meet up with the solicitor next week, but not sure what about. Janie says she wants to go for the DI position, but her boss says she's only just become a DS and needs more experience. Janie gets a call from Baxter, the pathologist, and it’s murder.

Janie graphically tells the wife how Carwyn was shot. The wife says Carwyn and his business partner Ceri had a lot of enemies. His wife says he wasn't planning a holiday, so why the guide? She leaves the sobbing widow.

Janie goes to John's and presents him with a mug from his show before barging in. She makes some observations about a photo of John with a woman, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Janie eventually admits she's there to talk about the case, and they head to a coffee shop.

John says the only question is motive. John says the victim was having an affair based on the fact that he switched from having bacon delivered in the morning to eating muesli. And he took up running! John thinks he was working out for a woman. But he doesn't think it's his wife Danielle, as she's not the revenge type. She’s also not very observant, so she might have missed it. But John says Joyce, who lives opposite him, is observant.

He explains that Joyce's son and wife were killed in a car accident, and their daughter, Ava, now lives with Joyce. John thinks Joyce is hiding something that is the key to the case. Janie reads an article on her phone about how Joyce got upset at a recent council meeting. Protestors hijacked the meeting to discuss the development. A protester called Alice was thrown out after threatening Carwyn, the victim.

Janie goes to talk to Alice, an art teacher. She says that at the time of the murder, she was on a school trip. She tells Janie about the strength of feeling over protecting the woods from development.

John, having a shave, says that although Alice was furious, the murder was planned, and there was no blind rage. Turns out he’s discussing the case with his cat Alan!

John goes to speak to Joyce. John notices she has a bare patch in the garden, and she says her foxgloves had to come out because she didn’t water them. Aren’t foxgloves poisonous? Interesting!

They have a good gossip. She says she can’t remember the last time she saw the victim, but then her granddaughter points out it was last week at the optician's. Joyce says the victim's personal assistant has been seeing him a lot recently.

Janie's car won’t start. Evan phones and says the victim is well-known for sleeping around. He's also discovered the victim had taken £200,000 out of the company, which Janie says gives a strong motive to his business partner, Ceri.

Janie goes to interview Ceri. He admits knowing the victim was stealing but didn't want to say anything because it gave him an obvious motive for murder. He doesn’t know anything about the lunch appointment the victim had booked in his diary.

John, doing some snooping, is being taken around one of the new houses by the victim's PA, Mel. He starts asking her about the victim. She says he could be a tough boss and fired one of the electricians for not lining up the plug sockets correctly.

John manages to get himself alone in the house and looks around. In the corner of a room, he spies a piece of green paint/tape on a red wall, he says to himself, "That’s very interesting,” and takes a photo.

At the police station, Janie tells the team the victim was defrauding the company and planning to flee to Dubai. Janie has a hunch that something's not right. DCI Clarke is keen to get to the pub. He asks Janie if she knows how he got this job. Janie replies: “The old DI was having an affair with her boss, and they both had to resign."

Evan, to Clarke’s horror, says the bosses were "desperate" to hire someone. "No, I got this job by being a good cop,” insists Clarke. But then adds: "And the affair… but mostly by being a good cop." He tells her to build a case, not just go on hunches.

John is at reception and talking to the cop on the desk (Mike Bubbins), who repeats Caesar’s catchphrase back to him. John tells Janie he’s been digging around alone, and Janie says he can’t do that because she could lose her job.

John shows Janie the photo of the wall. And says to look at the tape at the bottom. The victim was a neat freak, firing an electrician over a tiny mistake, and yet he was fine with the mess at the bottom of the wall. He says it's a real breakthrough, but Janie doesn’t look convinced. He adds he's interviewed Joyce just as Janie’s boss turns up.

Janie explains Joyce phoned the victim the day before the murder, but she says it was just to enquire about buying one of the homes. John says that’s not true because of Joyce's tea towels! "A woman with those towels would never buy a new build, she’s lying," he says. Clarke tells Janie off for discussing a murder case with John.

Janie and John argue, and she tells him to go. Evan says he's found something on TV. Next, we see Janie interviewing Alice. Turns out she didn't go in the caves on the school trip because of her "claustrophobia", but Janie points out she used to go in tunnels when she was a protester. Janie shows her camera footage of her in her car. She denies murder. Janie brings up the death of her best friend Sian, and says that she bottles things up. She's noticed how Alice changes the subject when the victim’s name is mentioned, and Janie says she does that when Sian's name is mentioned because she meant a lot to her. Alice admits to having an affair. Janie says the victim wasn't going to leave his wife, so Alice killed him. Alice denies it.

Janie turns up at John’s door to ask for his help. He says the most out-of-character thing in the investigation is the tape on the wall. "Why did Carwyn lose it with the electrician but not the decorator?" John has bought some teas for Janie, and she runs through all the different varieties of tea, and he says, “They're all the same to me". And this appears to be an Eureka moment for him.

At the new housing estate, Kerry is giving a speech about the quality of the homes. Joyce is there. Janie and John arrive. Janie tells John to stay in the background. Janie says to Joyce that she spoke to the victim about possibly buying one of the houses. But then John chips in, saying the victim was actually calling Joyce because he was threatening her over the fact that he’d realised he was the father of Joyce’s granddaughter.

"It all started with the decorator's tape, I couldn't get my head around why Carwyn hadn't noticed", says John. He says the reason he didn’t notice the mistake is because he's colour blind, just like Ava. Janie says: "That's why she thought my purple car was blue". The doctors thought Ava’s colour blindness was hereditary, and yet Joyce’s son wasn’t. Carwyn worked it out when he was at the opticians because Ava kept going on about her magic eyes. Joyce says he rang her up and asked for access to his daughter. John says Joyce didn’t kill him, but she did set the wheel in motion.

John reveals the killer

John says Ceri is the killer! Janie says he was wearing decorator's overalls and could have easily sneaked away to kill Carwyn. John says Danielle saw him, but that's fine because she was his accomplice. "You and your lover Ceri cooked the whole thing up together,” says John. They’d been having an affair for months. They were motivated by money after overhearing that Carwyn was planning to meet his solicitor to change his will. So they staged Carwyn’s suicide. They also set it up so it looked like Carwyn was defrauding the company, so it looked like his business partner had found this out and, in his shame, Carwyn had killed himself.

But John says he'd never do that because he’d be destroying his family name.

Janie then produces her evidence. The guidebook and, in particular, the way it was sent. She says it was odd that the book had to be signed for, as no books are sent like that.

She says Danielle sent it so she could be at the front door when the postman came, a perfect alibi. Janie also has camera footage of Danielle sending the package. "Oh, don’t look so annoyed [at Danielle],” says Janie to Ceri. “You messed up too. We took your overalls in for testing.” And clearly, they provided some crucial forensic evidence.

At the station, Janie says Danielle and Ceri are trying to blame each other. Clarke is annoyed that John helped on the case, but Janie says it was his guidance that helped. Clarke looks chuffed. Clarke says he will have a think about that DI position, but she mustn't work with John again.

Janie tells John that Joyce will be pleased that her granddaughter is going to become a millionaire through her dead dad’s money. John says Joyce will be pleased that she didn’t have to murder Carwyn as planned. He explains she’d dug up foxgloves to poison Carwyn’s tea at his mystery lunch appointment. A traditional murder method for a traditional lady. Very Agatha Christie. Janie asks for help on another case…