The Colour of Mary

Charlie Gimbert returns home from overseas, popping up again in a new and unlikely role as manager to Murray McNally, a famous but disgraced snooker player, these days a bad-tempered drunk. Murray wants Lovejoy to find him the billiards table which belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and money, it seems, is no object.

A visit to Fotheringhay Castle leads to a descendant of Mary's jailer, and the table is apparently still there. Gimbert buys it as a gimmick, a prop to raise cash on McNally's exhibition tour. But McNally himself has other plans for the table, and the two men's interests pull in different directions. Gimbert has inherited McNally's management rather than chosen it, which tells you everything about the arrangement. It all culminates in an exhibition snooker match starring the real world snooker champion Dennis Taylor, which is exactly the sort of guest booking this show loves.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Steve Coombes wrote it, and Ian McShane directed, his second and final turn behind the camera. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Malcolm Tierney returns as Charlie Gimbert, Alex Norton plays Murray McNally, Brian Pettifer is Willy Kinross, Martin Clunes, a familiar face long before Doc Martin, plays Anthony Drury, and Robert Daws is Stevens.

The episode went out at the end of January 1993, with the series well into its stride and happy to send its characters anywhere the object of the week took them. The confluence of historical intrigue and the slightly absurd world of professional snooker is a very specific mix, and the show plays it with a straight face. Mary Queen of Scots' furniture, her jailer's descendant, and a disgraced cue man with a dream: even the weightiest objects end up as props in a peculiar modern drama. That is the trade, and Lovejoy knows it.