Minder

Minder shares its title with the programme to which Boon was always compared, and it turns on a birthday joke. Ken's birthday is coming up, and Alex and Rocky are planning a surprise party for him at his cottage. They need him out of the way for a couple of days, so Harry invents a reason: he pretends he needs a minder.

His story is that he is being harassed by an ex-convict who was convicted by a jury of which Harry was the foreman. Ken, who has seen no sign of any such threat, goes along without realising that Harry is pulling his leg. A man who has spent seven series as a minder for other people is now sent to mind his oldest friend, and the pretence is that of a job that does not exist.

The twist, as Wikipedia puts it, is that Harry really is in danger, without knowing it. The joke he has made up has a real counterpart somewhere, and Ken, who took the assignment as a favour, is better placed to deal with it than he realises.

Peter Palliser wrote the episode, his second of the final series and the one with the most pointed title, and Anthony Garner directs. David Daker's Harry and Michael Elphick's Ken are joined by Saskia Wickham's Alex and Neil Morrissey's Rocky, and the guests include Paul Freeman as Edward Cameron, Christine Kavanagh as Mona Cameron, Sean Gallagher as Tony Heard and Nicholas Spanswick as Mark Cameron. It is also the last appearance of Mark Benton as Charlie Hardiman.

The title invites a comparison. Wikipedia's account of the series says that Boon shared many conceptual similarities with Minder, with a businessman and a heavy at the centre, although neither Ken nor Harry does anything illegal. Jim Hill has said that he once resubmitted a Minder script, rejected there, with Ken and Harry's names on it. An episode named Minder, in the last series, acknowledges the resemblance with some humour: the heavy is minding the businessman, who has invented the need for a minder in order to give his friend a birthday.

The idea is warm. Alex and Rocky organise the party out of affection for Ken, Harry joins in with a cover story, and the whole plan depends on Ken being a man who cannot say no to a friend who says he needs protection. That the story then turns serious, with a genuine threat to Harry, is the kind of reversal on which the series often ends its hours.

IMDb users rate the episode low, at 6.0. The party, the jury foreman and the real danger make a good beginning for a story that is, at least in its premise, about how much the partners owe each other.