Snow in Provence

"Snow in Provence" is the final series' lightest hour, and one of its most enjoyable — a story that tricks Bergerac into babysitting and then drops a drug operation in his lap. Charlie, heading to Milan with the Calders to advise on a painting, persuades Bergerac to stay at their Provence house and keep an eye on the two willful daughters, Louise and Clarissa — and the painting collection. Bergerac agrees for £150 a day, believing he has drawn the easy job. The girls, of course, are anything but easy: drunk homecomings, motorbike suitors, credit-card shopping trips and a boyfriend discovered in Louise's bed within the first night.

John Milne's script, directed by Tony Dow, is a comedy of manners that turns serious. Louise Lombard, early in her career, plays Clarissa with a bright, brittle energy, and Pippa Guard's Jennifer is the mother who has given up. The drug operation, when it surfaces, is running through the house itself: the sacked driver Jean-Claude and his associates have been using the Calders' staff to move cocaine, and a bag of the stuff ends up hidden in the well after Bergerac catches the men red-handed. Commissaire Dejeux, played with a lovely dry authority by Andre Maranne, arrives with a full police escort just after Bergerac has taken the evidence away.

The episode is at its best in the friction between Bergerac and the girls — the detective who has never had an easy domestic moment, suddenly in charge of teenagers who treat rules as suggestions. The resolution is neat: the cocaine recovered, the smugglers caught, and Bergerac — who has been paid to babysit and ended up policing — left to wonder how he always ends up doing the job anyway.

It is a charming, funny hour that shows the final series could still do comedy with a professional's touch, and Louise Lombard's presence gives it a star turn to remember. A welcome breath of warmth before the darker stories of the season's back half, and a reminder that Bergerac's private life — like his police career — was never going to be quiet.