National Wealth

Tinker is thrilled when Madeline Gilbert, a retired film star, sends for the Lovejoy team, because he has carried an old crush on her for years. Madeline wants to sell some of her antiques, and Lovejoy gets the job of arranging the auction. The auction matters all the more because Gilbert has fallen on hard times, and this sale is meant to put her back on her feet. Before the big day arrives, the house is robbed, in a raid that bears a striking resemblance to a string of country house thefts in England and France. An international gang seems to be at work.

The gang turns out to be French and armed, men who crossed the Channel after killing a gendarme. Lovejoy has an alibi for the night of the raid, the auctioneer Melanie Ford, but he starts to wonder whether she was coerced into tipping the villains off. And Tinker, chasing his old flame's honour and his own idea of heroics, puts himself in real danger by boarding a boat belonging to Lovejoy's chief suspect, a respected army major.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Geoff Lowe wrote it, William Brayne directed, and it aired on 17 February 1991. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Jean Kent, a genuine star of British cinema in the forties, plays Madelene Gilbert with a proper sense of her own history. Edita Brychta is Melanie Ford, François D'Aubigny is Adjudant Alain Bernard, Georges Trillat is Michel Le Mor, John Labanowski is Major Sullivan, Phil Smeeton is Det. Sgt. Armstrong, and Ronald Fraser is Michael Edwards.

The episode takes the series out of Suffolk and into international waters without losing the local feel. A film star's parlour, a French gang, and a Tinker with a head full of romance: the pieces are familiar, but the stakes are higher than usual. The crush that started it all gets its due, and Lovejoy gets his auction in the end.