Kids

Lovejoy's daughter Vicky disappears, then announces she is living with an older man whose wife has died. Susan, Vicky's mother, does not approve, and neither does Lovejoy, though he tries to keep his temper. When he investigates, he finds that the gentleman is not a widower at all, which changes the whole picture and makes the intervention a good deal more urgent. The episode went out on 15 March 1992, near the end of the third series, and it gives Ian McShane his most paternal hour of the season.

Running alongside the family drama is a case in the art world. A close friend of Lovejoy's has been duped into buying an expensive forged painting, and the fake art scam turns out to be run by the son of a cabinet minister. White-collar crime with a ministerial connection, and a daughter making her own choices with the wrong man: the episode keeps both fires burning and lets them light each other.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Francis Megahy wrote it, Peter Barber-Fleming directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Michael Kitchen plays David Herbert, Mel Martin is Susan Lovejoy, Amelia Shankley is Vicky, Antony Marsh is Michael Brightman, Grant Thatcher is Jez Brightman, and Nick Reding is Mark McKinley. Michael Kitchen, later of Foyle's War fame, plays David Herbert, a reminder of the guest casting the show could command.

It is a reminder that even in cases involving forged art or deceptive living arrangements, the underlying thread is the same: misplaced trust and hidden identities. Lovejoy the rogue is not an obvious family man, but this episode shows the instinct that makes him one, and it is the same instinct that sniffs out a fake at forty paces. The two strands share a theme, which the episode never needs to spell out: people believe what they want to believe.