'Professor T' Recap: Season 3 Episode 3

Professor T airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue.

The professor is on trial. He has waived his right to plea anything to a charge of attempted murder of Simon Lanesborough, but is nevertheless presumed innocent until proven guilty.

That might be difficult, given the quirkiness of the character witnesses – Ms. Snares, his mother, the dean – called to defend him. He has already lost his job at the university to a less qualified candidate, and now his future rests primarily on the testimony of Christina and whether the professor decides to defend himself.

Rabbit, at least, proves helpful in his testimony about the professor by explaining how the professor aids the police in solving cases, including a recent one in the very prison in which the professor is being held.

The prison has been suffering blackouts, and after one occurred the professor went to work in the laundry room and found a guard dead, his head bloodied by blows from a hammer. Steddon was a tyrant who sold drugs to inmates and abused his power. Everyone in the prison had motive to kill him.

Some had more than others, however. Emil Rhodes was a particular target of Steddon because he stopped buying drugs and convinced others to do the same. Furthermore, his cellmate heard him tell Omar, the professor’s cellmate, that they could deal with Steddon. Omar is due to be released soon but has been in prison so long that he lacks real-world skills. He applied to post-carceral programs but has not heard back – Emil suspects Steddon prevented the applications from going out.

Emil is also due to be released soon, and claims to have actually been rehabilitated by prison. Why would he and Omar endanger their futures so close to their releases?

Both men worked in the prison workshop, from which a hammer – likely the murder weapon – is missing. Emil was in the shower – perhaps washing off blood? – when the lockdown that followed the discovery of Steddon’s body started.

The professor notices disarray around Omar’s bed and finds a bloody hammer hidden under the mattress. Omar is put into solitary confinement. All Omar will say is that he needed help finding a job and Steddon blocked him from getting it.

But the professor believes Omar is innocent. When Omar talks about the crime that sent him to prison, for which he feels genuine remorse, he unconsciously hangs his head in shame. But he didn’t do so when the hammer was found. The professor thinks Omar found Steddon’s body and hid the hammer to cover up for someone else – which explains the blood under his fingernails and his fingerprints on the hammer. Omar also made it obvious that something was hidden in his bed – he wanted the hammer to be found and to take the fall for someone else.

Just like the professor. If the professor speaks up and tells the truth at trial – he can’t lie – Christina will be disciplined for having an unapproved gun while luring Simon to her office, and she will lose her job, pension, and the husband and kids with whom she has recently reunited. The investigator in the case suspects she is lying and has visited her to ask if she wanted to change her testimony; she said no.

The prosecutor in the trial casts doubt on Christina’s testimony and portrays her as the manipulator of a jealous ex-lover, the professor, to take the fall for her. During a recess, Adelaide gets the dean to distract security and then visits the professor. Before his lawyer gets security, Adelaide, who has deduced what actually happened, begs her son to tell the truth and not defend Christina. He tells his lawyer he will be changing his plea.

When he stands up in court and attempts to do so, however, Adelaide causes a scene by pretending to faint, leading to another recess.

When the trial resumes, Christina amends her testimony before the professor can plead guilty. She admits that she had a gun, and explains that the professor fired his gun into the ceiling, not at Simon, because he feared Christina was going to kill Simon. But she was just going to arrest Simon; the professor sometimes can’t understand other people’s emotions.

That was also the case with Steddon’s murderer. The professor gets permission to speak to Omar and asks him for details on the murder, then compares them to the crime scene. They don’t add up. Chiefly, Steddon was killed by someone right-handed, and Omar is a leftie.

The professor recalls an argument he witnessed between Steddon and another, kinder guard, Burridge. He also notes that a photo of Burridge’s son is no longer up in his office. The professor goes to Burridge and tells him that he knows Burridge killed Steddon. Burridge’s son recently died of an overdose, as the professor has learned from the police, and Burridge blamed Steddon for introducing his son to heroin in the first place, when the guard came over to Burridge’s house for dinner. The professor noticed that, when he showed Burridge Steddon’s body, he was surprised – not by the body, but because the hammer was gone.

Omar is taking the blame because Burridge made life in prison better, and Omar doesn’t want the guard to lose his job. Plus, Omar is afraid of life outside. The professor encourages Burridge to confess to the police so that Omar can go free, but Burridge refuses – Omar won’t do well on the outside, and all the professor has on Burridge is guesswork.

After some time, the professor realizes he has made a miscalculation and rushes to Burridge’s office. He finds the guard has hung himself and left a note confessing to the murder. The professor misread what Burridge might do – he should have just gone to the police rather than Burridge.

And so, in his own trial, after Christina amends her testimony, the professor pleads not guilty.

He and Omar are released from prison. Omar is picked up by his old boxing companion, Adam Bernard, whom the professor helped prove innocent in another murder. The professor asked Adam to help Omar: he will give him a job and a place to stay until he gets on his feet.

Dan and Lisa are dating again, even as Lisa’s father continues to decline from Alzheimer’s and Dan struggles with dating his boss. That perhaps portends good news for the relationship between the professor and Christina, and indeed, when she finds him in his favorite spot on the roof to apologize for letting him go to prison for her, she holds his hand. She has quit the force, and is still under investigation, so she is moving on – she and her family are relocating to the coast. She has come to say goodbye.

I loved you, she tells the professor. He responds by simply wishing her luck with her family, and she takes her hand out of his.