Just Desserts

Series two opens with Lovejoy coming out of a low-security prison after an eight-month sentence for theft. He is not repentant. He is not even particularly sorry. He believes he was set up, and he returns to Suffolk hoping to find the villain and get even, which is about as close to a mission statement as this show has ever needed.

The familiar faces gather around him at once. Lady Jane Felsham, Tinker Dill and Eric Catchpole are all there, along with Michael Seymour, Renata Van Der Zee, Lord Alexander Felsham, Pieter Maartens, and the Paynter family in the shape of Mark and Marigold. The intersecting lives make the point neatly: Lovejoy has been away, but the town has not stopped turning, and neither has his list of scores to settle.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Dick Clement wrote it, Don Leaver directed. Ian McShane returns as Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Anthony Valentine plays Michael Seymour, Christine Kavanagh is Renata Van Der Zee, Pavel Douglas is Lord Alexander Felsham, Edmund Dehn is Pieter Maartens, Hugh Munro is Mark Paynter, and Maxine Audley is Marigold Paynter.

There is real satisfaction in watching Lovejoy pick up where he left off, even though the place has already given him plenty of trouble. The series went quiet for four years between seasons, but the show treats the prison stretch as a minor inconvenience. It went out on 6 January 1991, launching a revival that would keep the show running until 1994. La Frenais and Dick Clement, the team behind The Likely Lads and Porridge, co-wrote the opener, and it shows in the easy rhythm of old friends falling back into step. Out of the gate, back into the murk, and the divvying resumes as if he had never been away.