Weekend Off

"Weekend Off" takes Bergerac off the island and into a London kidnapping siege — a story about a fake engineer, a real ransom and a police operation that nearly goes wrong. The premise is gloriously convoluted. A French electronics engineer, Anton Charet, is acting as an unofficial envoy to Lebanese kidnappers; the Special Branch officer who usually escorts him has called in sick; and Bergerac and Willy, who know Charet, are sent to collect him and his colleague Letellier from the ferry and take them to Sinclair House. The twist: Charet is a fake. The real one, it emerges, has attended four previous meetings and wanted to change the arrangements for security — and the "Lebanese" he is meeting are English policemen. Special Branch, naturally, wanted this kept quiet.

The kidnapping of the fake Charet and his wife Janine by masked men throws the whole operation into chaos. The kidnappers demand three million Swiss francs; the French will pay, since Charet has kidnap insurance; and Special Branch's Detective Inspector Walter, eager to prove the leak came from Bergerac, does not make a friend of him. John Milne's script, directed by Charlie Naim, sends Bergerac to London with Susan, where the trail leads to Sylvester Silver — a Jewish dressmaker with a fraud conviction, played by Freddie Jones with a marvellous, shifting mixture of fear, cunning and self-pity. Silver, it turns out, hired the kidnappers, and the money was always the point.

The siege is the episode's centrepiece. Silver, cornered with Charet, agrees to release Janine in exchange for a police officer and some food; Bergerac volunteers; and the scene in the office — Bergerac overpowering Silver, only for Charet to hold them both at gunpoint — is as tense as anything the series did. Baker, the hired hitman, ends up crashing through a glass roof onto the real illegal gambling den, in a piece of farce that somehow fits.

The coda is gentle. Susan and Deborah, left waiting at the siege, discuss the truth the series has been circling all season: the force will always come first with Jim. Bergerac, having handed over the manuscript as evidence and watched Peter testify in Canada, visits Philippa at the mansion to retrieve a bullet — and is invited to stay and check out the bedrooms. The weekend off is over, but the season is setting up its endgame. A busy, entertaining hour that shows the seventh series could do London, sieges and farce with equal confidence.