The Napoleonic Commode

Lovejoy is evicted from his rented cottage because his landlord, Freddy the Phone, otherwise known as Frederick Arthur Haig Montgomery Wavell Reeve, owes back taxes on it. The bailiff mistakes Lovejoy for the landlord, and before he can explain, his car and much of his antique inventory are confiscated along with the house. Lovejoy takes to the road with little more than a direction. The season opened on 10 January 1993, a fresh start that begins with the hero losing everything he owns.

The road leads him to a commode said to have belonged to the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The question is not whether the piece is old, but whether Boney really sat here, and that requires a continental expert to authenticate it. So begins a quest with a wonderfully daft premise: a homeless dealer, a toilet of imperial pedigree, and the small matter of provenance.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Terry Hodgkinson wrote it, Baz Taylor directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Alexei Sayle plays Freddy Reeve, the landlord who started all the trouble, Olivier Pierre is Monsieur Brogni, Julie T. Wallace is Mrs. Neighbour, John Burgess is Popov, Georgia Allen is Angela, and Noel Coleman is Peter Felsham. Alexei Sayle, one of the greats of eighties alternative comedy, gives the landlord his comic edge, and John Burgess, a face familiar from decades of British television, is Popov.

The episode builds its puzzle around the sudden loss of domestic security, and it works. Stripped of his home, his car and his stock, Lovejoy still cannot resist a good question about a good object. Even at his lowest, the pursuit of history keeps him upright. The commode, for the record, is a fine way to start a season. Few season openers have asked their hero to start from quite so far back.