Jack of All Tradesmen

Jack of All Tradesmen puts Ken on the wrong side of his own instincts. A shady local businessman wants the Mahoney brothers, Niall and Sean, found. They have become mixed up in a scheme that has left a bookmaker very angry, and the man hiring Ken is not one whose motives bear much examination.

Ken has his doubts from the start, and Doreen has more. She tells him not to take the job. He takes it anyway, because the money is good and he cannot afford to turn it down. It is the most uncomfortable decision he has made so far, and the episode is honest about why he makes it.

What follows is a search through the pubs of Birmingham for two Irish brothers who do not want to be found. It is footwork rather than detection, and it takes Ken away from the hotel and into the city's pubs.

The episode tests the rule on which the programme was founded. Harry's advertisement offered anything legal, and nothing here is illegal on its face: finding people is lawful work. But men in trouble with a bookie may not be safe once they are found, and whoever pays for the finding may not mean them well. That is the root of Ken's misgivings. The question is not whether the job is legal, but whether it is decent.

Jim Hill and Bill Stair wrote the script, their third for the series after the opening two episodes, and Graham Theakston directs. Charles Lawson and Sean Lawlor play the Mahoneys, with Michael O'Hagan, Ken Kitson and Lloyd McGuire among the supporting cast. The title's twist on the proverb, with tradesmen in the plural, points at the brothers as well as at Ken, a jack of all trades who has just added tracing missing persons to the list.

Doreen's part is small but telling. Here she is the voice of conscience, and the fact that Ken overrules her is the episode's point.

Its premise is one of the more interesting of the run, even if the search itself offers little more than a tour of the city's bars. Boon generally gave its hero clear-cut causes, a widow, a cheated collector, a frightened child.

Here it asks what a decent man does when the only paying work on offer is for someone he does not trust, and gives an answer that is not flattering to him. The episode is a small one, but it is the first time the series admits that Ken's need for money can outweigh his judgement.