The Italian Venus

A mean landowner is reluctant to share an inheritance with his hard-up brother, who happens to be a friend of Jane's. So Lovejoy intervenes, as a favour to Jane, with a cunning plan that depends entirely on a fake statue. The statue is named for its Italian inspiration, and it is the sort of object that looks marvellous on a plinth and collapses under the first serious glance, which is exactly what the plan requires.

The brother in question is Douglas Holden, disinherited by the snobbish Sir Hugo Carey-Holden, and the family feud is played out against the kind of dusty drawing rooms where the furniture is worth more than the feelings. Lovejoy has to walk the line between legal right and social favour, using every wile he has to make sure the deserving brother recovers some of his rightful fortune. Old money, new schemes, and one very obliging fake.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and T.R. Bowen wrote it, John Woods directed. Ian McShane anchors it as Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Patrick Malahide plays Sir Hugo Carey-Holden, Celia Imrie is Lady Felicity Carey-Holden, Nicholas Farrell is Douglas Holden, Joanne Pearce is Emma Holden, Pavel Douglas is Lord Alexander Felsham, Ian McNeice is Gervais Rackham, and Michael Percival is the Auctioneer.

There is a particular pleasure in watching Lovejoy's calculated mischief run against a backdrop of old money struggling with modern necessity. It went out on 13 January 1991, and it is the kind of episode the revived series would specialise in: mischief dressed up in good manners. Patrick Malahide and Celia Imrie play the Carey-Holdens with the right amount of frost, and Ian McNeice adds his usual relish as Gervais Rackham. The fake statue is the whole trick, and the episode never forgets that the best con is the one where the mark does most of the work himself. The Carey-Holdens oblige admirably.