Thieves Like Us

Thieves Like Us was advertised in 1995 as a one-off last episode, and it was in fact an ordinary episode of the seventh series, made in 1992 and held back. It is a heist comedy in which the heroes pose as the thieves.

CBS is asked to go undercover at a hotel to solve a jewellery theft from its strongroom. The man jailed for the theft, Max Cone, is the fiancé of the owner's daughter, Claire Walters. She and her father, Jeremy Walters, are convinced that he is innocent, and they suspect the hotel's manager, Bruce Aurit, and its head of security, Mike Puckett.

To catch them, Ken and Harry stage a collapse of their own firm. They pretend to sack all the staff of CBS and put the office up for sale, then use Lennie, one of the disgruntled former employees, to tell Bruce and Mike that the company is in a very doubtful financial state and that Ken and Harry plan to raid the safe. Alex becomes Julia, a chambermaid, and Rocky becomes Sandy, a porter. Ken and Harry check into the hotel as Kenneth Smith and Henry Jones, businessmen who want to organise a conference.

The plan works by seduction and sedation. Ken and Harry drug Bruce so that Alex can steal his key to the safe, which shows her skills as a cat burglar. She then befriends Mike to get his key. Mike catches Ken and Harry searching his room and demands to be included in the plan as the price of his silence.

From there the two suspects try to outwit each other. Bruce calls the police, advises Ken and Harry to escape, and steals the contents of the safe, but the strongroom cameras record him. Mike confronts him and demands his share of this robbery and the earlier one. The pair are caught red-handed trying to hide the jewels in the office safe until the police have gone. Detective Inspector Lytell remarks that it is a hell of a way to prove a point. Max's case is reopened, and everyone celebrates over dinner.

Peter Palliser wrote the script and Anthony Garner directs. Jason Isaacs plays Puckett, Nick Dunning plays Aurit, Philip Voss is Walters, and Dora Bryan plays a forger called Simone.

The episode is a late example of a trick the series had always liked, the plot in which the investigators pretend to be criminals, and it gives every regular a disguise. Its history is odd. The fan site notes that it carries the seventh series' title sequence, and that it has no mention of the growing romance between Ken and Alex or of Harry's engagement, which featured in Shot in the Dark.

It was therefore evidently meant to be shown earlier. Wikipedia says that it was delayed because it was not completed in time and then had to wait for a suitable slot; rumours that it began an eighth series were never substantiated.

IMDb users rate it 7.9, one of the better scores in the final run. Its weakness is that it comes out of order: Ken and Alex, who had become a couple by the real finale, are here still colleagues, and the sense of an ending is missing. As a caper, it is a cheerful way to close the file.