Have a Nice Day

Have a Nice Day is a missing-person case in which the missing person walks straight past the detectives. Anita Wilberforce comes to Ken and Margaret because her husband, Ray, who owns a video shop, has emptied their joint bank and building society accounts and gone off to a conference in Cannes. She wants him found.

She also has no money, so Ken offers to work for results only. Margaret is not impressed and suspects that Ken's generosity has something to do with Anita being pretty. It is a small exchange, but it shows the partnership settling into its own rhythm, Margaret the professional and Ken the soft touch.

Ray's business partner, Alan Chambers, fills in the background. The marriage is shaky, Ray is probably having an affair, and Chambers suspects that Ray has been stealing from the firm. Ken and Margaret take the shop's customer database to a computer expert they know, Brian Sullivan, who finds that the software has been altered to let some sales go unrecorded, the money going straight to Ray. When Anita finds a second set of till rolls with a different total, the fraud is proved.

At the Plaza Suite, Harry is preparing an Australian Night for Ross Townsend of the Australian Tourist Board. He hires two cowboy electricians to fit new lighting. They blow the main fuse, one of them gets an electric shock, and Harry saves his life with the first aid he learned in the brigade. The ballroom, though, is left without power.

The answer comes from Rocky's courier work. A delivery to a windsurfing company at a sailing exhibition at the NEC, which Ken and Rocky spend some time chasing around the halls, puts them in touch with Alan Clark, who brings a supply of camping lamps to the Australian Night in exchange for a chance to show off his sailboards.

The ending is the episode's best idea. Ray Wilberforce turns up at the Australian Night and tells Ken and Rocky that he is planning to emigrate to Australia with his new girlfriend, Mandy. Neither of them has ever seen a photograph of him, and they do not recognise him.

Jim Hawkins wrote the script and Alex Kirby directs. Sharon Duce plays Anita and Edward de Souza plays Ray, with Denis Lill as his partner and Nick Tate as the man from the tourist board.

The software fraud gives the episode a modern edge for 1988: the money is hidden not in a false ledger but in altered code. The weakness is that the investigation is done by others: an expert finds the trick and a wife finds the till rolls, and BDI's detectives are left to miss their man at a party.

That is clearly the joke, and a good one, but it leaves the hour a little thin as a case. It is better as a comedy of near-misses, with Harry's first aid as an unexpected reminder of the firemen both men used to be.