Help Me Make It Through the Night

Help Me Make It Through the Night begins the sixth series with Ken moving house. He is taking over a derelict cottage in the village of Upper Ridley, rent-free, in return for renovating it, and he would much rather be doing that than a job. Harry has his own concerns. A client, John Pritchard, wants CBS guards for the launch of a health club, dressed in tracksuits, and Harry promotes Rocky to executive and tells him to hire college students.

The case that Ken does not want is a domestic one. John Dewar, the owner of a dairy, suspects that his wife, Melissa, is having an affair. Ken hates such work, but he watches Harmony House, is spotted, and is invited in for tea. Melissa seems a respectable woman who spends her time on parish charity, and he decides she is lonely.

Then he and Harry follow her to a park, where she listens to a brass band, and see her go off with a man, Paul Lyle. Ken traces him to a hotel, talks his way into his room, and copies a map of the countryside south-west of Nottingham marked with routes, times and places. Lyle seems to be planning, with two friends, Milne and Preston, to abduct Melissa.

The abduction comes quickly. Harry and Rocky, posing as stranded motorists, are forced at gunpoint into Harmony House, where they find Melissa held captive. Lyle takes Dewar, and the dairy wages, under threat of killing Melissa, and leaves him in the middle of a wood; Dewar notices a plane ticket in Lyle's car and soon finds a police station across the fields. The police arrest Milne and Preston at the airport, and realise that the ticket and the convenient police station were not accidents. Lyle has set up his own accomplices.

Ken frees Harry and Rocky, who are still tied up, and he and Harry visit each place on Lyle's map. They find Lyle and Melissa at the deserted farm. The two escape by helicopter, Melissa keeping Ken at bay with a gun, but Harry has already taken the briefcase of Dewar's money from the helicopter.

Bernard Dempsey and Kevin Sperring wrote the script from a story by Bernard McKenna, and Matthew Evans directs. Jenny Agutter plays Melissa, Stephen Dillane is Lyle, and Michael Feast is Dewar.

The strength is the twist. The wife who seemed lonely is the organiser, and the kidnap that police and detectives are trying to solve is a double-cross against the men who carried it out. The planted clues, a plane ticket and a conveniently placed police station, are what make the story.

The weakness is the ending. A helicopter is a large thing to appear in a Nottingham farmyard, and the escape leaves the episode with a flourish rather than a conclusion. Harry's retrieval of the money is the best comic touch. It is a stylish start, and IMDb users rate it among the series' best.