Three of the programs embedded in the popular “Masterpiece Mystery” television series on Public Television are set in the university town of Oxford, England. Each episode, in any and all of the three series, begins in the same way. A string of seemingly unrelated incidents follow, one after another, in rapid succession. The viewer is left to wonder whether what’s been presented is not simply window dressing before the ‘real’ story begins.

A typical episode might begin something like this. We see a young man riding a bicycle when he is nearly sideswiped on a narrow street. Then we are on the university campus, where a harried professor is dashing from one location to the next. Then we see a woman working in her garden. Then comes a street scene somewhere in the city. Then there is a nightc…