A new boss arrives at Oxfordshire Police, and he begins to question Lewis' role as a consultant. After an exhibition of anthropomorphic taxidermy, the body of a young avant-garde artist is found. Lewis, Hathaway and Maddox must delve into the worlds of social media, drugs, taxidermy, alternative art and the homeless East European community. Meanwhile, Hathaway confronts his father and sister, whom he does not have a good relationship with.

该剧是英剧《摩斯探长》的续篇，于2006-2015年在ITV播出，共九季33集，每集约90分钟，其中从2013年的第七季开始每集在ITV1首播时被拆分为上下两部分连续两周播出，然而在重播时以及在美国PBS电视台播出时依旧作为整集播出。该剧将背景设置在学术气息浓郁的牛津，剧中很多含有隐喻的诙谐对白在外国文学爱好者看来会别有趣味，同时延续摩斯系列侧重通过案件展示各色人生和命运悲剧的特色，凶手被揭露后通常会有一幕对手戏将矛盾推至高潮，尘埃落定后缓和而带有希望的片尾曲又形成鲜明映衬，让人感叹命运无常及人的渺小，同时又看到光明的希望。该剧多位编剧也曾参与ITV版大侦探波洛和马普尔小姐系列剧的改编。

Lewis returns to Oxford after several years absence and is reluctantly assigned by his new boss, DCS Innocent, to the murder of an Oxford mathematics student who was shot while participating in a sleep study. The key-code used to access the sleep lab was assigned to a fellow maths student, Daniel Griffin, but Daniel's math tutor has provided him with an alibi. Daniel is a maladjusted young man who will soon inherit his father's automotive empire. He is disruptive and has no respect for his uncle who now heads the company. The future of the company however rests on an impending deal with Japanese investors who insist that family unity is all important at this time. When two other murder occurs, Lewis must decipher a cryptic clue left in an old case file by his former boss, Chief Inspector Morse.

At first the murders of Reg Chapman, a handy man at the Bodleian Library and gambling addict, and Nell Buckley, a popular Art student, seem unrelated. However, it transpires that Chapmen stole parchment from the library upon which Nell and another student persuaded Philip, a brilliant, autistic young painter, to innocently forge letters by the poet Shelley for the international collectors' market. When both victims,for different reasons, threatened to expose the mastermind behind the scam, they were killed.

Lewis attends a book launch for a fantasy novel penned by prodigious young research fellow Dorian Crane, with whose adoptive mother, Ginny, Robbie's boss Jean is trying to match-make him. Later that night a Czech hotel worker Marina is found murdered. Professor Deering, the uncle of Dorian's fiancee and muse, Alice, confesses to having seen Marina on a foreign website and paid for her to come to Oxford, finding her work. However, as a supposed gay man, he is keen to hush up his sex life with her. Robbie believes that Marina was killed in mistake for Alice and then Dorian is also murdered, in order to preserve a secret well beyond Robbie's imagination.

Steven Mullan is found dead in his bathtub, the scalding water indicative of the white-hot rage that motivated the murder. Lewis recognizes Mullan as having been recently released from prison after having tried to kill celebrity atheist Tom Rattenbury while driving drunk. Mullan's sentence may be over, but have the scars healed for the Rattenburys, especially daughter Jessica who remains in a wheelchair from the incident?

Lewis is less than pleased when he and DS Hathaway are assigned to protect Nicky Turnbull, a former criminal turned successful author. Turnbull had actually cheated two Oxford colleges in his computer scam and had received death threats. Turnbull is everything Lewis dislikes but he grits his teeth does the job. Turnbull is in Oxford to make a speech at the request of the Students Union but things take a serious turn when Jo Gilchrist, a student and a member of Turnbull's reception committee, is found strangled. Gilchrist wrote for a student newspaper and was about to expose a professor's exam scam. When Turnbull is shot in the courtyard of his hotel, Lewis realizes that the man's wife was his first girlfriend. He also learns that they were on the verge of getting a divorce.

Faced with a crime that bridges the worlds of neurosurgery, blood sports and animal rights, Hathaway works his first case as DI with the help of his new partner, DS Lizzie Maddox. Lewis, struggling to adapt to retired life, jumps at the chance to rejoin the force when Chief Superintendent Innocent seeks his help.

Andrea De Ritter, founder of an organization that supports gifted children, is murdered after making a presentation to Zoe Suskin, only fifteen but an Oxford student. That night Andrea had resisted the advances of young student Elmo Woodeson as well as sending a copy of the autobiography of former spy mistress Dame Grace Orde to Zoe's publisher father Leon. She had added inside the book "Who Killed Mary? See Chapter 8." Both Leon and Elmo are killed shortly after and Zoe's tutor Donald Voss is poisoned though not fatally. Suskin had punched Liam Cullen, Andrea's lover, wrongly believing he was having an affair with his wife Judith following a text message to her and indeed sexual affairs, with Andrea at their hub, would seem to motivate the killings.

Following a squash injury Robbie ends up in casualty where he meets the Donnelly family, whose school-girl daughter Beatrice was drugged and woke up in a field, having been raped. Evidence points to Oswald Cooper, who worked at her school and whose prescription drug matches the doping agent. However he has an alibi, a dinner party he gave for three former student friends, now all eminent men. Next day he is found garroted and castrated. Forensic evidence backs the view that he raped Beatrice and the alibi is proved to be false. A friend of his who is blackmailing the three guests is also garroted. It is clear that Oswald Cooper kept in with the great and the good by organizing scams and deceptions for them but his murderer was preserving a far more personal secret.