Unlucky Dip

"Unlucky Dip", the third episode, is the series' first comedy, and Bob Baker — a writer better known for Doctor Who and the children's serial The Children of the Stones — gives it a dry, theatrical mischief. A drugs courier, Raymond Dumoitier, is tailed from France by Bergerac and the Bureau. On the hydrofoil, the barman Simon Gibbins watches the courier closely; by the time the police pick Dumoitier up, the package has vanished. The courier, a legitimate travelling salesman on paper, is released on the Chief's orders, and Bergerac is reminded that his own probation review is days away.

The stolen package, it turns out, is in the barman's wallet. Gibbins — played by Jack Galloway — takes the cocaine home to his mother Gloria, an expensive house gone to seed where the drink is never far from hand. Rather than hand it in, he decides to sell it to people who would buy it anyway, and the episode becomes a small, sharp chain of bad decisions: the courier who should never have carried, the thief who thought he had struck gold, the buyers who want their goods and their cash back, and Bergerac — told not to investigate — investigating anyway.

Prunella Scales, years before the comedy roles that made her a national face, appears in the guest cast, and the supporting players lean into the farce without tipping it over. Ian Toynton directs with a nimble touch, cutting between the panicking courier, the opportunist thief and Bergerac's faintly amused pursuit. The brutality allegation that threatens to derail him — the courier's complaint that he was beaten — is handled lightly but it lands: Bergerac knows the accusation is a tactic, not a belief.

The hour is slight but sharply observed, and its value in the run is contrast. The pilot and the Lister case were grave; this one lets the audience laugh at the messiness of small-time crime before the season turns dark again. By the end the drugs are recovered, the complainant is exposed and nobody involved looks clever — which, in a series whose detective is often the only adult in the room, is exactly the point. Not a landmark, but proof that Bergerac could carry a caper as readily as a conspiracy.