This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

Before we get into this week’s episode, a word of warning: if you haven’t yet watched The Marlow Murder Club all the way to the end, please stop listening to this podcast right now and watch that first as we’re about to discuss the ending and reveal the killers. Consider this a blaring spoiler alert. Sufficiently warned? Ready? Okay, grab your tin of travel sweets and let’s head off to Marlow…

Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob, and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Three victims, many suspects, and countless alibis. At the start of Episode Four, the sheer weight of this case has started to take a toll on everyone involved. Suzie and Becks are feeling exhausted and hopeless, Judith is haunted by flashbacks, and Tanika Malik is beginning to question her instincts. 

CLIP

DCI Greenly: The reason I chose you is because you’ve got good instincts.

Tanika: I hired three untrained women as civilian advisors.

DCI Greenly: And they’ve been getting results. You should back them. You should back yourself.

Before anyone can figure out what’s going on, Judith Potts has a moment of clarity and realizes that there’s going to be one final murder victim… herself. 

CLIP

Tanika: Becks?

Becks: I’m sorry to interrupt but it’s Judith. I think there’s something wrong.

Tanika: Why?

Becks: I’ve been calling her landline and there’s a “not in service” message and she’s not picking up her mobile. I think she’s in danger.

Thanks to her friends Suzie and Becks, the support of Tanika and the police force, and that convenient powdery sweet sugar from her travel candies, Judith unmasks the killers, solves the case, and comes out alive. All is well again in Marlow, and the newly minted Marlow Murder Club enjoys a well-earned celebration on the river.   

CLIP

Judith: I suggest we look to the future. Champagne anyone?

Suzie: Yes please.

(laughs)

Today, actor Samantha Bond is back to talk with us about the series as a whole and reflect on her character’s arc from independent retired archaeologist to amateur detective alongside her new friends and fellow sleuths Suzie and Becks. 

Jace Lacob: We are joined once again this week by The Marlow Murder Club star, Samantha Bond. Welcome.

Samantha Bond: Thank you for having me.

Jace Lacob: Episode Four begins with a flashback to a young Judith in Greece as we learn what happened with her husband and perhaps why she’s so enamored of a life on her own terms. A sense that’s echoed by the shot of her alone in the middle of the river. How does her husband’s betrayal and the ensuing scandal shape the woman that she’s become?

Samantha Bond: I think she was horrified by what her husband did. I think it was a betrayal of her, of their marriage, of their love. And I think it does lead to years of, not loneliness, because she isn’t lonely, but singleness of doing things alone, of not trusting, I think is a huge part of it. But it certainly drives her on.

Jace Lacob: I think that’s the thing that I love most about this reveal, is there is this sense of heartbreak and anguish, but this was also a very formative experience that perhaps gave Judith the mettle to strike out on her own, to be tested and tempered by adversity. Do you see it then perhaps as maybe both the source of her pain, but also the reason for her strength today?

Samantha Bond: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. I think if you’ve endeavored to do something alone, that has given her strength. It’s given her a drive. It’s hard to imagine a betrayal like that. That’s what they did together was archaeology, and they’ve made this incredible discovery and he threw that discovery away.

Jace Lacob: And in a way, this investigation becomes a way for her to sort of reclaim that as something that is hers. I love seeing in this episode how her mind works, how everything is a puzzle to be solved. She tapes together the shredded page from the magazine, she finds a major clue, these obituaries for people who witnessed Ezra’s will a year after their deaths. What is archaeology to Judith ultimately? Is it another puzzle to be solved, the ultimate puzzle?

Samantha Bond: It really is the next puzzle. And she brings everything from her archaeological background to crime solving. But she does it meticulously. She does it forensically. She doesn’t make assumptions. She doesn’t jump into the dark. It’s all methodically worked out.

Jace Lacob: Suzie finds Judith’s archaeological storage room and the newspaper story about Philippos’s theft of the statue of Artemis, which finally allows Judith to tell her story.

CLIP

Judith: We discovered it. We found it together. And then he sold it for a fortune to whoever. And it’s not been seen since.  

Becks: Was he caught?

Judith: By the time I knew for sure that it was him and I had gone to the police, he had skipped the country, left me. I wasn’t able to shake the scandal. It followed me for the rest of my career.

Jace Lacob: Why has Judith kept the truth about her past buried for so long, and what does it mean that she allows herself to be vulnerable with Suzie and Becks, even just for a minute?

Samantha Bond: I think she’s kept her past secret because it was, well, it’s a betrayal by him. It’s a huge disappointment. Why should anyone else know about it? And that scene is one of the most phenomenal scenes I’ve ever shot. That scene weaves through at least three rooms that I can remember. And it’s something like seven pages of dialogue, which is colossal to do in one day. And Jo and Cara and I had worked really, really hard to be right on it.

But then you go from Judith being slightly whimsical and quite funny and this, that, and the other, and you’re in a filthy room and there was a lot of dust and the newspapers. And then on a sixpence, the scene becomes black and grim and for Judith it’s a huge emotional moment to realize that the women now know her past. It was huge for all of us.

Jace Lacob: She says,

CLIP

Judith: I lied. And, if I’m being honest, I knew what I was doing. But I was in love, and I was stupid.   

Becks: It wasn’t your fault.

Judith: You don’t understand.

Suzie: But it was your husband who—

Judith: I’d like you to leave.

Suzie: What?

Judith: Both of you.

Becks: Judith, please.

Suzie: I’m so sorry. This is on me. I shouldn’t have—

Judith: Now.

Jace Lacob: What goes through her head? Is it too much all at once to have this pouring out after so many years of keeping the truth bottled up so tightly?

Samantha Bond: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. I think that she thought she could keep the past in the past, and at that moment she realizes she can’t, which makes her incredibly vulnerable. She doesn’t know the women quite well enough yet for that to be okay. But she will get to know them.

Jace Lacob: It is this first step of vulnerability, and I love that it’s taken four episodes to get her to that point. And she doesn’t do so willingly. This is sort of forced out of her, and then she pulls back, but we know she’ll be able to open up again. And I think we’re seeing this first step here. So, I love the moment when Judith realizes that Elliot has headed out on a fishing trip and says so matter-of-factly,

CLIP

Judith: There’s going to be a fourth murder, me.

Jace Lacob: How is she so calm in this moment, so clear headed about it?

Samantha Bond: I don’t know how calm she is, really. I think if there have already been three murders and suddenly your name has gone to the top of the list, I don’t know that she’s calm. I think she knows that she wants to protect Suzie, and she wants to protect Becks. So, I think she’s closing the doors, and just trying not to let anyone else get hurt.

MIDROLL

Jace Lacob: Judith stages the scene so effectively and reveals she knows it’s Danny before he removes his balaclava. And I was reminded of Strangers on a Train here, the crisscross with the multiple killers, that Danny killed Stefan for Elliot Howard, Elliot killed Iqbal for Giles Bishop, Giles killed Liz for Danny. What did you make of the big twist here, the reveal that there was this crisscrossing of killers and not one single killer?

Samantha Bond: I remember when I was reading the scripts before I had the part, and I was reading on the sofa, and then I would laugh, because, as you know, there are lots of funny things that happen. And then, in the last 20 minutes, my husband, all he could hear was me going, Oh! Because I had no idea that it could be that complex. You have no idea that it would be the story that we now know that each time a murder happens, the person who wanted to kill someone was somewhere else in the country. I mean, it’s a brilliant intrigue.

Jace Lacob: What I love is it all comes back to the river, to these three men rowing together with Giles as their coxswain and coming together at the regatta. In retrospect, does Judith’s wild swimming actually point the way to the mystery’s solution?

Samantha Bond: In her wild swimming is when she has some of her best moments of revelation. So, if you watch a boat of four rowers, and then there’s the little one at the back, and that’s, I think, a moment when she goes, oh, hold on a minute. Because all the men are very tall, they’re oarsmen, so the actors are all six foot three, except one, and he’s five foot three.

So, he’s part of the link, but he can’t have been an oarsman, he has to be the cox. And I think moments like that, the moment when I’m in the middle of the river and the oarsmen are going past is when Judith suddenly goes, hang on a minute, they’re not all six foot four. Someone has to be in charge of the boat.

Jace Lacob: The motif of Judith’s travel sweets pays off magnificently here as well as she flings the powder in Danny’s eyes and then stabs him with her crossword pencil, that mighty weapon from the beginning. How did you interpret this moment? Is it Judith at her sharpest?

Samantha Bond: It’s her pencil at its sharpest. Yeah, no, it shows a great deal of calm in her. It is quite funny when you have to make enough sugar come out of a packet of sweets, because that’s an awful lot of sugar to blind someone. But that’s not something she’s pre-prepared. That’s just her thinking on her feet and in the moment.

Jace Lacob: Judith begins the series on her own, wild swimming in the Thames, and ends it on a boat with friends and fellow sleuths, Becks and Suzie, toasting, “To us.” There’s a sense of belonging and commonality that no woman is an island. How does that final image function as a bookend to Judith’s isolation at the start of Marlow Murder Club?

Samantha Bond: Oh, I think it’s enormous. I would like to say for the record that some of that punting was me, and punting is not easy, and the poll is incredibly heavy, but I think it’s a lovely resolution for the three of them actually. Becks’ life is a bit dull, Suzie’s life is lonely, and Judith has suddenly found two comrades, and one would like to think they’d go on being friends post murder.

Jace Lacob: There is a series two of Marlow Murder Club on tab, though it will have a different format, with each two-episode block telling a complete mystery. First, an adaptation of Robert Thurgood’s Death Comes to Marlow, and then two new mysteries written by Lucia Haynes and Julia Gilbert. What can you tell us about series two?

Samantha Bond: Oh gosh, we’ve only really just finished shooting. It was gorgeous. And because Jo and Cara and I now are friends, it brings, I think, a greater warmth. I think it brings more strength between the three of them. And the stories are fabulous. We’ve had some incredible guest leads. And there’s always a moment when someone’s revealing something, and you’ve got a guest lead come in and they are flawless. I mean just flawless. But as in season one, it’s the intricacy, the complexity of the plots that give them their weight.

Jace Lacob: So, finally, I have to ask, you touched on it a little bit, but where might we find Judith Potts when we pick back up with her in Episode One, Series Two? And has she perhaps found more of a sense of belonging in Marlow?

Samantha Bond: She has certainly developed a friendship with the girls, women. But they’re all now, all their tentacles, talons are alive for the possibility of another adventure. And they get three adventures.

Jace Lacob: Three new adventures. Samantha Bond, thank you so very much.

Samantha Bond: It’s been a great pleasure, bless you.

Next time, we travel to the world of 16th century England and King Henry VIII’s court. 

CLIP

Cromwell: Do you remember how you used to compare the king to a tamed lion? You can pet him, you can pull at his ears if you wish, but all the time you’re thinking to yourself, those claws. Look at those claws.

Join us next week as we tease fact from fiction with Wolf Hall production researcher Kirsten Claiden-Yardley.