Tangos in the Night

"Tangos in the Night" is the seventh series' most purely entertaining hour — a story about a stolen necklace, a tango instructor and the brittle rituals of Jersey society. The theft is almost incidental. Lady Cynthia Trowbridge, chairman of the Great Jersey Tango Contest, is entertaining her dance teacher Pepe Mendoza when Rita Smith — vice-chairman of the contest, arriving unannounced with her friends, the "Rat Pack" — slips upstairs and lifts a diamond necklace from Cynthia's drawer. The theft is a frame; the real crime is the humiliating plot Rita has built around it.

John Fletcher's script, directed by Stuart Urban, is a drawing-room comedy with teeth. Caroline Langrishe plays Cynthia with a lovely, wounded dignity — a woman who brought Jersey society together, married for money, and is isolated in her own grand house until needed for social events. John Savident, later of Coronation Street fame, is Sir Arnold, the husband who chose her as a suitable partner and left her alone. The tango instructor, it emerges, is no Spaniard at all: "Pepe" is Alan O'Hara from Liverpool, son of North-West tango champions, saving every penny to buy a studio where his mother — too frightened to leave her rough neighbourhood — can live with him.

The plot against Cynthia is a masterpiece of social cruelty. Rita and her friends know about the affair with Pepe; they know the winner of the contest dances the exhibition tango with the instructor; and their plan is to have Cynthia dance it before the whole island, with everyone knowing. The humiliation would be total. Bergerac, working through the theft, pieces it together — and then does something the series rarely did: he refuses to let it happen. He confronts Rita, forces her to admit she actually likes Cynthia, and gives the two women a shared moment of recognition: they are both lonely, both isolated, both pretending.

The episode resolves in kindness rather than punishment. Rita returns the necklace and the cover story; Alan, learning Rita is from Liverpool too, dances with her instead; and Cynthia is spared her public humiliation. It is a gentle, unusually generous hour — a social comedy in which the detective's job is not to catch a thief but to stop a wound. Langrishe and the supporting cast make the drawing-room world live, and the tango itself becomes the episode's metaphor: a dance about leading, following and trust. A charming entry that shows the seventh series could do warmth as well as menace.