The screenwriter of this episode, Alan Pater (a prolific and accomplished dramatist who wrote this in his 70s) deserves a lot of credit for this very interesting study of creativity. But first: the story.
A professor of the Romantic Poets (man) and a professor of mathematics/probability (woman) both have a personal susceptibility to gambling and are associated with a kind of "alcoholics anonymous" program, but for gamblers. They become a couple. The literature prof. harbors an ironic resentment of the poets in whom he is an expert, because his life is drab and theirs were exciting. The math professor knows a vivacious, risk-taking art student, Nell, who among other things makes funky-looking necklaces; the math prof. typically wears one of them. Nell is also a performance-artist, who is known around Oxford for leading free "tourist tours" where she tells a series of fantastic lies about various Oxford landmarks and famous people, that tourists only slowly figure out are all fake and silly.
Nell shares a house with several other students, including a painter and drawer with an odd personality: he has excellent ability to paint and draw what he sees, but is unable to make things up -- to imagine. Nell likes to lead him around and tell him to do things, which he complies with; she has the imagination he lacks. One of the clever art projects they do together exploits the painter's talent at antique handwriting; they make obviously fake ancient documents, such as a grant application written by Shakespeare. Nell likes to read Romantic poets aloud, including Shelley. Another house-mate is a math student of the math professor, and he makes extra money by working for a betting-shop.
A down-and-outer engineer, his life ruined by gambling, is reduced to being a book-clerk at the Bodleian Library, which has original Shelley letters and many books from Shelley's time. He calls the "gamblers anonymous" hot-line and gets the math prof., who refers him to her boyfriend the literature prof. The student who part-times at the betting shop also gets to know him, and thus Nell hears of him. The two professors conceive a plan to get rich by taking a big gamble. The down-and-outer steals original Shelley letters and also cuts blank end-papers from books of the time, and passes these to the betting-shop boy, who passes them to Nell. She gets the artist to copy the Shelley letters onto the blank end-papers, and the fakes are then put into the Bodleian in place of the real ones. The math prof. then sells the originals to collectors. The two profs. then get Nell to expand the scheme, so as to "discover" a long-rumored but never-found cache of Shelley letters about his wife's famous novel, Frankenstein. They will sell these letters -- which will all be fakes, but on authentic paper of the day, done by the obedient, uncomplaining artist. When this scheme is in danger of being exposed, the profs kill first the down-and-outer (planting the murder-gun in the painter's room), and then Nell. The betting-shop boy flees in fear of his life. The profs. have no fear of the painter; he is so uncomprehending and detached that he has no idea what documents he has been making or any comprehension that fraud is going on -- he thinks it is all another art project conceived by Nell.
Thus we have the resentment of the uncreative (the literature prof) for the creative (the poets), the difference between talent without invention (the painter) and inventiveness without talent or judgment (Nell, who only thinks of herself and never of how her actions may upset other people).
When Nell's dead body is discovered, she is washed-up onto a river-bank, young, broken and bedraggled. The ending of the episode is at Shelley's Oxford death-monument, on which is a marble sculpture of him, washed-up on the beach (he died young, by drowning), sprawled in the same posture as Nell was on the river-bank. The painter sits before it, a lost soul -- "I wish I could make things up" he says.
And thus we realize that the literature prof., in killing Nell, was killing one of those Romantic poets of whom he was so jealous, and whom he so hated, yet whom he could not escape, because his livelihood depended on his being an expert on them. The fact that he could get rich only by forging their letters, and not via writings in his own name, further deepened his frustration.
This screenplay was one of Pater's last works, a fitting meditation on the fact that inventive people (as he was) are vitally needed in the world, but they must develop judgment, to sense the effects that their inventiveness may have on those around them. Nell's lack of judgment makes her the unwitting villain of the piece; she treated manipulating the painter as a game, and forging letters as just another art-project lark, but the literature prof knew it was a serious crime -- Nell got herself killed for not realizing in advance that she was playing with real fire.
I should add, I produced avant-garde theater and performance art for ten years, in San Francisco, so I have known some real-life Nells in my time.
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