Who Dares, Sings

Lovejoy and Jane have the job of fitting out a smart new restaurant being opened by Major Linden Walker, an old army friend of Tinker's. The goods come from George Palmer, a former prison officer, and one Lovejoy apparently knew on the inside. Everything is delivered on time, which in this show is always the moment to start worrying.

The furniture is stolen. The rightful owners turn up on opening night and recognise their own possessions on the restaurant floor, and Lovejoy goes on the run to clear his name. As if that were not enough, he also discovers that Tinker was never an officer in the army at all, merely a corporal who has been quietly improving his rank in conversation for years. The episode closes with Linden and Tinker's cabaret act, Crime and Punishment, making its first and last appearance, and frankly once is probably the right number.

John Woods directed, from a script by Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Douglas Watkinson, and the episode aired on 3 February 1991. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. John Wells plays Linden Walker, Eleanor Summerfield is May Walker, Peter Armitage is George Palmer, Corrine Ransome is Angela Moxon, Robert Austin is Bruce Wayne, and Lee Whitlock is the Constable. Austin's character carries a name far grander than his part in the story, out of place in a tale of pubs and stolen furniture.

It is the kind of contained domestic disaster that lets the regulars play off their established rhythms. Even when everything falls apart, the familiarity between the central players carries it. A dealer who trusted the wrong man and must dig himself out is the show's favourite engine, and here it is running at full power. A pub fitted out with stolen furniture, a false major, and a cabaret act nobody asked for: Lovejoy's week, basically.