Cry God for Harry

A priceless collection of jade artifacts has been stolen from Winfield Hall, Makepeace's ancestral home. She and Dempsey drive down for what is supposed to be a weekend pheasant hunt with her father's other guests. But the search for the jade turns into an old-fashioned murder mystery, a genre switch the episode handles with visible relish. Neil Rudyard wrote it, William Brayne directed.

The country house does what country houses always do in these stories: it seals everyone in, puts a body among them and dares the detective to work. Ralph Michael's Lord Winfield presides with the air of a man who has seen the family silver come and go, and the guest list is properly stocked with suspects. John Terry's Arnold Sims, Seretta Wilson's Susan Sims, Ralph Arliss's Naismith, Christina Greatrex's Frances Trafford and Brian Hawksley's Dr. Potter drift through the drawing rooms, while Keith Bonnard's Ch'ien Cheng Tsu hints at where the jade was headed. Christopher Robbie and Brenda Kempner are among the guests filling the corners. Lord Winfield is, of course, Makepeace's father, which gives her a stake in the stolen jade the other guests do not share. The episode went out on 8 March 1985, a week after the bomb scare of Blind Eye. It is a reminder that the first series could change its clothes from week to week and still hold together.

The title comes from Henry V, though the only campaign here is over the contents of a display case. Dempsey moves through the weekend with the cheerful confusion of a man who has turned up to a fancy dress party in his own clothes, and Makepeace, at home in a way she rarely is, steadies him.

It is a comfortable, well-made hour, the sort that reminds you the show could do drawing-room mystery as easily as car chases. The jade is the excuse; the company is the point.