The case of the week
A storm frames Aunt Auriel’s retirement-home production of The Tempest while Simon prepares to escape the people pursuing him.
Aunt Auriel’s retirement-home staging of The Tempest gives Lyle an unexpected role as the storm closes in on Market Shipborough. The play’s themes of departure and return sit beside Simon’s plan to escape the people pursuing him. His account of the hidden money as their father’s property supplies another piece of family history, but his death on the beach ends the immediate story without resolving every question around his past.
The storm gives physical form to the pressure surrounding Simon, while The Tempest makes disappearance, return and family recognition unusually explicit motifs.
The Kingdom family story
Simon says the hidden money belonged to their father, drives into the storm and is later found dead on the beach.
How the stories meet
The storm gives this finale a force that the earlier cases have held in reserve. A claim involving their father’s money brings the brothers’ inheritance and history to the surface, while Aunt Auriel’s retirement-home performance of The Tempest turns the themes of departure and return into a communal event. Simon is thinking about escape, so the play’s language takes on a particular weight for the family around him. The episode moves between practical legal business and the performance without making the stage material a substitute for the story. Instead, it offers a way to see how each person understands leaving: as freedom, abandonment, a chance to begin again or a loss that cannot be repaired.
Peter and Simon’s conversation about their father’s money changes Peter’s account of his own family. Simon’s decision to drive into the storm leads to his death on the beach, bringing the return story to a sudden end. The discovery does not give Peter the ordinary closure he might expect from a case. He has learned that Simon was present and that he carried a version of the family history Peter did not know, yet the person who could explain further is gone. The episode therefore closes Series 2 by joining its two main ideas: the pull of the past and the cost of trying to leave it. Aunt Auriel’s production offers a communal reflection on separation, while the beach becomes the place where the brothers’ private story reaches its irreversible point.
The storm’s conclusion is especially painful because it follows an episode that has brought the brothers together through work and then through talk about their father. Simon’s claim about the money changes Peter’s understanding, but there is no time for the brothers to test or reconcile their accounts. The beach discovery fixes the outcome while leaving motive and history partly open. Aunt Auriel’s production has made departure visible to the wider community; Simon’s death makes it a fact the family must carry. Peter is left with more knowledge than he had at the beginning of the series and less chance of asking the person who supplied it for an explanation.
Where it fits in the Series
The storm gives the second series a decisive ending. Aunt Auriel’s production of The Tempest places departure and return on stage as Simon considers escape; the claim about their father’s money then alters Peter’s understanding of the family before the beach discovery closes Simon’s story.
The reported audience for this broadcast was 5.69 million. Across the original run, that places it at number 8 among the 18 reported episode figures. That context gives the episode a place in the series’ original reception as well as its story sequence.
Reveal the complete plot summary — spoilers
Plot summary
As a severe storm reaches Market Shipborough, Aunt Auriel’s retirement home stages The Tempest, with Lyle unexpectedly joining the cast. Simon prepares to flee the criminals pursuing him and tells Peter that the hidden money originally belonged to their father. Simon drives away into the storm; afterwards, Peter finds his body on the beach.
Themes to notice
- Storm. The characters face the consequences of choices made while Simon prepares to leave.
- Reckoning. The Tempest performance brings separation and return into Aunt Auriel’s community.
- Loss. Simon’s death gives loss an immediate force while leaving the family with unanswered questions.
Where it was filmed
- Holkham Bay — Holkham or Wells is the likeliest setting for the stormy beach climax.
Aunt Auriel’s retirement-home production of The Tempest gives the episode a second stage as the storm approaches.
Holkham or Wells is the likeliest setting for the closing beach scenes.