The apparent reprieve that opens “Drinking Games” lasts only long enough to make Min’s death more painful. Louisa turns towards work, Lamb refuses the easy explanation, and River starts his cover assignment while his colleagues in London face a devastating loss. The episode moves between mourning and hospitality: a vodka session, a village flight and a family meal all carry dangers that are difficult to recognise in time.
- Released
- 9 December 2022
- Runtime
- 53 minutes
- Source novel
- Dead Lions
- Director
- Jeremy Lovering
- Writer
- Morwenna Banks
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Watch and read
Open the official programme page or explore the source novel.
Detailed plot
Reveal episode spoilers
Min’s captors turn the gun threat into a joke and invite him to drink with them. Piotr and Kyril appear willing to accept the surveillance as part of their shared profession. The vodka flows, and Min becomes increasingly unsteady. Another man arrives without being properly introduced. When Min leaves, he declines a taxi and insists on returning by bicycle. The scene seems to have ended with embarrassment rather than injury, which makes the news that follows land with particular force.
Lamb receives a call telling him that one of his officers is dead. He and Catherine attend the scene, where Min’s death is being treated as a cycling accident involving a car. Lamb takes the smartwatch so that Roddy can reconstruct his last movements. Catherine has the harder immediate task of telling Louisa. Grief does not make Louisa want distance from the assignment. She asks to continue working for Webb, and Lamb allows Marcus to replace Min alongside her. The work gives her somewhere to put the shock before she has begun to absorb it.
River arrives in Upshott as a journalist writing about village life. Kelly, who works at the pub where he is staying, welcomes him and shows him around. Her father Duncan owns the local flying club, making the family an obvious connection to the destination River is investigating. Kelly takes him flying, but first he has to leave his phone and other belongings in a locker. River memorises their positions. When he returns, they have been moved, and Duncan has visited the office while he was in the air. The friendly introduction has also given somebody a chance to inspect his possessions.
In London, Louisa and Marcus meet Pashkin and continue preparing the security arrangements. Lamb concentrates on Rebecca, the woman associated with the car that supposedly killed Min. Her account sounds rehearsed, and money in her bag gives him another reason to press her. He offers protection in exchange for the truth. Eventually she admits that she was not driving and that the collision was not what killed him. The accidental-death explanation begins to fall apart before Lamb has even assembled the complete account.
Shirley studies airport footage and spots how Chernitsky sent his mobile abroad without travelling with it. He put the phone in a band’s luggage, making Roddy’s location trace a false lead. Catherine urgently informs River that the suspected killer never left the country. River is already at Kelly’s family home, sharing a meal with Duncan and Alex. A friend called Leo arrives just as the warning reaches him. The guest is Chernitsky, and River has to conceal his recognition while remaining at the table.
Turning points
Reveal turning points
The opening refuses to make survival of the previous cliffhanger equal safety. Min leaves the drinking session alive, yet the apparent friendly resolution only delays the discovery that he has been killed. Lamb’s decision to retrieve the watch keeps the investigation rooted in physical evidence rather than letting grief become its only motive.
River’s locker check is one of his sharper observations. He cannot see who searched his belongings, but he has arranged a way to notice that someone did. The mobile in Estonia offers the reverse lesson: a precise technological answer can still answer the wrong question. Shirley distinguishes the location of a device from the whereabouts of the person who owned it, and the difference puts River face to face with the danger he thought had gone away.
There is a painful imbalance in the episode’s invitations. Min is offered another drink when he needs clear judgement; River is offered company when he needs access to information. Hospitality makes each situation easier to enter and harder to read. Catherine’s news to Louisa breaks through that false ease. Her job is not to solve the death in that moment but to tell somebody something unbearable, and the episode gives that ordinary act of care weight alongside the covert work.
Book vs show
Reveal book and television spoilers
River has spent three weeks undercover when the novel returns to Upshott. Television keeps his arrival and early discoveries within the season’s compressed sequence of events.
He researches a novel under his book cover; the screen assignment is newspaper journalism, providing a more immediate explanation for his interest in the residents.
River and Kelly already have a sexual relationship in Dead Lions. This episode develops their acquaintance through a village walk, flying and a family meal.
Kelly’s novel father is a solicitor, with Ray Hadley heading the flying club. On screen, Duncan owns the club, concentrating River’s suspicions within the family.
Mick Herron, Dead Lions (2013).
Characters and actors
Linked locations
Village streets and the pub establish Upshott as somewhere River can plausibly stay and ask questions. Castle Combe stands in for that village, while Slough House houses the digital investigation that eventually corrects his assumptions. The family house and flying club are story locations with distinct functions; the warm domestic setting becomes the place where his cover is tested.
Trivia
Dustin Demri-Burns knew Min would not survive Series 2 when he took the part. He told TheWrap that his agent warned him early, while Eleazar described the later absence of her screen partner as difficult. Their interview connects the shock for viewers with a departure the actors had prepared for.
Questions and answers
Is Min definitely dead?
Yes. Lamb attends the scene and identifies the loss as one of his own officers. The uncertainty concerns the manner of his death, not whether he survives.
Why does Louisa return to the same assignment?
She wants to keep working rather than stop with her grief. Lamb permits it and sends Marcus with her, so the continuation is also the start of a different working partnership.
Who is the dinner guest called Leo?
He is Andrei Chernitsky, the man linked to Dickie’s death. River has just learned that the Estonia phone trace was misleading, making the friendly introduction an immediate threat to his cover.