Highland Fling (2)

The second half of the Highland story finds Lovejoy back at the Brooksbys' ancestral estate, and the key to saving it turns out to be an unlikely piece of architecture: an eighteenth century Greek Revival pigsty standing in the woods near the manor. Nobody pays much attention to a pigsty, which is precisely why it has kept its secrets for so long. It went out on 5 April 1992, completing the story a week after the first part.

Lovejoy digs into the history of the odd little building, and what he finds there secures the future of the family home. The pigsty is a fine example of this show's favourite trick, taking an object nobody would cross the road to look at and proving it holds the answer to everything. The manor is grand, but the rescue comes from the outhouse.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Andrew Payne wrote it, Francis Megahy directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Simon Ward plays Edward Brooksby, Eleanor David is Katriona Brooksby, Adrienne Corri is Lady Rebecca, Bill Travers is Duncan, Larry Lamb is Gerald Somers, and Tom Cotcher is Robert Fraser. Adrienne Corri, a familiar face from British film going back to the fifties, plays Lady Rebecca, and Bill Travers, of Born Free fame, is Duncan.

The episode closes the story with the family's fortunes restored and Lovejoy having done what he does best: looked at something everyone else ignored and found the whole mystery inside it. The combination of familiar faces and a deep dive into local history gives the piece a satisfyingly grounded feel, and the pigsty earns its place in the show's gallery of unlikely heroes. The pigsty plot is a neat inversion of the usual country-house mystery, where the treasure is always in the grand rooms.