Glasshouse People

Glasshouse People begins with broken glass. Harry wakes in the middle of the night to find the windows of The Grand smashed and the crockery wrecked, and it soon becomes clear that this is not vandalism but a warning. A local protection racket has decided that the hotel should pay for its safety, and Harry hires Ken to find out who is behind it.

It is the first time in the series that Harry's own business is the target, and the episode gives the friendship a practical test. Harry is the one with money and schemes. Ken is the one who goes out and deals with the people the schemes attract. When the threat comes to the front door, the partnership has to work.

Running alongside the racket is a quieter puzzle. Patsy, a young woman staying at the hotel, befriends another guest, Sidney Garbutt, a befuddled businessman who turns out to have lost his memory. Ken, Harry and Doreen set out to learn what has happened to him.

Richard Griffiths plays Sidney and Tracie Bennett plays Patsy, two more guests of the calibre the series attracted from its first weeks. Griffiths, who has a page on this site, takes the part of a man who cannot explain his own situation, and the mystery of his condition draws the hotel staff into the case.

Paul Wheeler wrote the script and Ian Knox directs, his third episode in six weeks. The title plays on the proverb about people in glass houses, and the hotel's broken windows make the point literally. Those who throw stones at The Grand are about to find their own position less secure than they thought.

The two plots sit together awkwardly in one respect. Sidney's memory loss is the second amnesia story in five episodes, after the stranger with the bundle of cash in Fools Rush In, and the repetition suggests a first series still working out what kinds of story suited it. The protection racket, by contrast, points forward. Threats to Harry's businesses became a staple of later series, as he moved from hotel to hotel, ballroom and country club.

The episode is one of the best-liked of the first run among IMDb users, sharing the series' highest score with Something Old, Something New. That is a modest measure, but it matches the impression the outline gives. The racket gives Ken real danger to face, the amnesiac gives the hotel household something to do together, and the episode uses The Grand as a small world in which both kinds of trouble can be dealt with in an hour.

For viewers watching in order, it is also the point at which the regular company feels settled. Doreen joins Ken and Harry in the inquiry into Sidney's lost memory, Hanif is now on the staff, and the hotel has become a home as well as a place of work.