Death and Venice (2)

Part two finds Lovejoy still in Venice, working for Caterina and Lavinia with a view to busting their scam. He takes a job directly with the twins, which is a bit like signing up to guard the henhouse, but he has a plan. He also meets Lucky Luciano, a Scottish forger who turns out to be instrumental to the whole business. Two men who know their way around a fake, in a city built on them.

The truth of the matter is that the beautiful Caterina Lovejoy has been wooing all this time is not Caterina at all, but her greedier sister Lavinia, who is less interested in saving art for posterity than in saving it for herself. Lovejoy and Lucky unravel the mystery of the Island of Rats together, which is a wonderful name for a location and an even better one for a plot twist.

Ian La Frenais and Jonathan Gash wrote it, Baz Taylor directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, and the regulars are all present. Fulton Mackay plays Lucky Luciano, Alexander Knox is Pinder, Gwen Humble plays both Caterina and Lavinia, Haydn Gwynne is Cosima, and Alibe Parsons is Nancy.

The episode is a colourful dip into international intrigue, with the usual Lovejoy pleasures underneath: the glamour, the patter, and the quiet satisfaction of watching a divvie out-think people who think they have the upper hand. It went out on 14 March 1986, a week after part one, closing the first series on a story that had to solve the twin puzzle and wrap up the swindle at the same time. Fulton Mackay, best known to British viewers as the prison officer in Porridge, plays Lucky with the same dry authority he gave that cell block. Even in a city this beautiful, avarice remains the most consistent form of crime. And the twins, for all their cleverness, never stood a chance.