Diplomatic Incident

The eighth series closes with a thriller and a wedding — and, in the final frames, the beginning of Bergerac's last chapter. "Diplomatic Incident" finds Bergerac in France, helping at Danielle's vineyard, when Crozier summons him back: his leave is cancelled, and he is needed for a job. The assignment is a VIP protection detail. Per Wemstrom, a Swedish philosopher and economist acting as a neutral party in east-west talks about saving the Soviet economy, is being secretly flown to Jersey while a decoy takes his place at Heathrow. The men who do not want a new competitor in the market, the episode makes clear, are prepared to stop him by any means.

David Crane's script, directed by Ken Grieve, is a tidy assassination thriller with the series' usual apparatus: the undercover decoy, the Swedish State Security agent following the wrong car, the security man killed in the grounds, the shot that hits Wemstrom in the shoulder. The real assassin, Jean-Louis Clandel, abseils from a window and fires at the bed — only to find a dummy; Bergerac had the room numbers altered, a small piece of deception that turns the trap. The final suspect is the one no one expected: Gillis, Wemstrom's own secretary, who hired the assassin and, cornered in a bookshop, shoots himself.

The episode is a study in the cost of the job. Bergerac admits to Danielle that he thinks he is losing his touch; Wemstrom, recovering, talks to him about retirement and tells him neither of them is the sort to sit back and relax. The parallel is deliberate — two men who have spent their lives being useful, wondering what they would be without the work. The final scenes give the answer: Bergerac, trying to give a speech to Danielle's neighbours, is interrupted by Hungerford, who has heard they are getting married and arrives with a Citroen as a gift — and the suggestion that they all go into business together. Bergerac and Danielle wander off for some quiet time, leaving the speech unfinished.

The eighth series ends on that image — the detective, at last, off duty, with a woman who wants him for himself. It is a warm, hopeful close to a season that had opened with Susan's death and spent its year taking Bergerac apart. The threat is neutralised, the wedding is coming, and the series has one more year left in it. A fitting end to a strong season — and a reminder that even the messenger boy deserves to stop running.