Blood Money

An antique dealer is murdered and a cache of priceless Egyptian artifacts goes with him. The crooks need a buyer, and Dempsey and Makepeace go undercover to find out who is willing to pay for stolen history. Dave Humphries wrote it, Graham Theakston directed. It went out in October 1985, midway through the second series, when the formula of an American cop dropped into a world of London villains was hitting its stride.

The guest list is a small hall of fame for British telly faces of the period. Stefan Kalipha's Colonel Rasheed, Dudley Sutton's Bailey, Derek Martin's Scott and Julian Fellowes's Redgrave all have their eyes on the artefacts, and you spend the hour enjoying the company even while the plot does its work. Fellowes, years before Gosford Park and an Oscar, makes a memorably oily Redgrave, and Sutton would go on to spend a decade as Lovejoy's Tinker. Tony Osoba's Chas Jarvis, Les Maryon's tanker driver and Roy Alon's motorcyclist complete the picture, and Ray Smith's Spikings keeps the SI10 end of the operation ticking over from the office.

The Egyptian angle gives the episode something most heist stories lack: the loot is irreplaceable, which makes the greed around it feel properly obscene. The dealers circle it like sharks, and the pair have to stand in the middle of the feeding frenzy without looking like prey. The undercover work means talking your way into a world of fences and fixers, and watching the pair pretend to belong is half the fun.

It is a tidy, professional caper with a museum-quality guest list, and it shows the show's knack for dropping its leads into worlds they do not belong in and watching them cope. Nobody in the cast is wasted, and every face earns its screen time. It is the kind of hour that rewards a second look, with the casting delivering small pleasures that the first pass hurries past.