Return of the Ice Maiden

Philippa Vale returns, and the fourth series is richer for it. "Return of the Ice Maiden" finds the diamond thief back on Jersey to recover the jewels she was forced to abandon in her last encounter with Bergerac — the diamonds she left behind in the third series' auction story, which the police have quietly kept secret in the hope she might come back for them. She does, arriving disguised first as a nun and then as a bearded hippy, and the episode is a duel between two people who genuinely enjoy each other's company.

Rod Beacham's script, directed by Michael Custance, gives Lumley her best material yet. Philippa dives for the diamonds and finds a bag of marbles — Bergerac had the port officials watching for her — and the subsequent scenes between thief and detective crackle with the series' finest double-talk. Bergerac knows who she is; she knows he knows; and neither can make it stick. When he takes her to Lil's Place, the island's rich set realises who she is, and the episode deepens her history: her father was an artist the rich collected and then abandoned, he became addicted to heroin, and she took up stealing to pay the bills.

The plot around her is a Dutch money-plates case — forged currency plates meant to have been destroyed, an informant stabbed in his bath, and Mary Lou Costain, the society dealer who bought them. The honest-to-goodness villain of the hour is Costain, who offers Philippa a hiding place and a way off the island in return for breaking into the police station and stealing the plates — with instructions to kill her afterwards. Philippa, of course, has her own plan: she is working with Bergerac, or thinks she is, and the two of them play the whole island for fools.

The finale is vintage Vale. Costain's hired man kills her instead; Philippa throws the plates to him knowing Bergerac will chase him and not her, and leaves the scene with a cheery farewell while the detective is left frustrated in the water. She is a thief, a liar and a manipulator, and the series adores her for it. A stylish, funny hour that proves Bergerac's best duels were always with the criminals he liked.