Answers to the Name of Watson

Answers to the Name of Watson is built on a misunderstanding that the title is careful to preserve. Arturo and Elena Sandini, a husband-and-wife circus act staying at The Grand, ask Ken to find their missing cat. They do not want to go to the police, because they do not want any publicity. Ken, who has advertised for anything legal, can hardly refuse a lost pet.

He is curious about the secrecy, and with reason. The Sandinis are not quite who they say they are, either: away from the ring they are Arthur and Helen Sanders. And Watson, it emerges, is no domestic cat. He is a fully grown lion from their lion-taming act.

The thieves are a group of animal-rights campaigners who have taken Watson to use in a publicity stunt for their cause. That gives the episode a neat symmetry. The owners want to keep the matter quiet, and the people who have taken the animal want as much noise as possible. Ken is caught between the two, responsible for an animal he cannot easily hide and has no idea how to handle.

His method is the one the series will return to again and again. Rather than call in the authorities, he goes undercover, presenting himself as an activist to get inside the group's hideout and bring the lion out. A burly ex-fireman with damaged lungs passing himself off as an eco-campaigner is the sort of comedy Boon does well, and it depends on Michael Elphick's Ken being plausible as a man who is out of his depth but not out of ideas.

Francis Megahy wrote the episode and Laurence Moody, who directed the opening episode, returns. The household at The Grand is still taking shape around Ken, with Rachel Davies as Doreen, Joan Scott as Ethel and Bill Gavin as Nick, and the hotel is again the place where the work finds him.

This is the most openly comic premise of the first series, and an early sign that Boon would treat its crimes lightly. The risk in a story like this is that the joke is spent once the lion is revealed, and the episode depends on what follows the reveal rather than on the reveal itself.

The title's joke works on two levels. Watson is the name a lion answers to, and the name of the most famous assistant in detective fiction, a reminder that Ken is a reluctant investigator who has stumbled into the trade. There are heavier episodes in the first run, but few that state the programme's good humour so plainly.