Always Leave Them Laughing

"Always Leave Them Laughing" takes Bergerac into the entertainment world and finds the funny man at the centre of a rape allegation. At the Jersey Princess beauty contest, comedian Andy Galbraith — one of the three judges, alongside Hungerford — is named in a complaint by a disappointed contestant, Christine Bolton, who staggers down the stairs of the Royal Barge with a badly cut face claiming he tried to rape her. Bergerac inherits the case from Crozier and must test a public man's charm against a private accusation.

Jack Douglas, a comedian best known from the Carry On films, plays Galbraith with the showman's reflex of deflecting every question — a man who has faced accusations before and who goes for a walk, produces an antihistamine prescription, and expects the island to take his word. The script, from Robert Banks Stewart and Peter Miller, keeps the question of credibility open for most of the running time, and Peter Smith directs the hour as a character piece as much as a procedural. Suzanne Danielle, a model and actress of the era, plays Christine with a raw, unsettled quality that makes the claim impossible to dismiss outright.

The episode is at its best when it lets the entertainment machine do its work. Galbraith's lawyer warns the case must be wrapped up quickly; the backers of his summer show circle; and Bergerac, interviewing Christine and then the comedian's associates, keeps finding the same pattern — accusations before, settlements, silence. The investigation turns on what happened in the hotel rooms, and the episode does not flinch from the ugliness of testing a complainant's account against a beloved performer's word.

It is a serious hour in a series that had already shown its range, and it holds up because it refuses easy answers. The comedy setting is the surface; underneath is a story about reputation, power and the difficulty of proof. Brian Glover and Derek Benfield round out a cast that keeps the world of the summer show convincingly venal. A watchable, uncomfortable episode that shows the second series' darker register, and a reminder that Bergerac was never afraid to put a familiar public face behind the accused's door.