Irish Stew

The Lovejoy Antiques team is in Ireland, looking for new stock and hoping to find a painting by Jack Butler Yeats for Jane to give her uncle. Their venture begins at the establishment of Bertie Montserrat, a disreputable dealer, where they interrupt what appears to be a burglary. Montserrat insists that no crime took place. But in the chaos, a page from the legendary and supposedly lost Book of Clonmel slips into their possession.

The page sets the investigation going. The trail leads them to an expert, Brendan Hennessey, whose opinion on such manuscripts carries real weight. It leads Lovejoy to the monastery of Father Xavier, who rescued the ancient book, and to the cleric's sister, Maeve Fitzgerald, an impoverished former actress who has allowed herself to be manipulated by Montserrat, who is using her to raise money to save her house. The search for a painting turns into a tangle of rare manuscripts, local desperation, and the persistent shadow of a dubious dealer.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and T.R. Bowen wrote it, John Crome directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. John Kavanagh is Hennessey, Stella McCusker is Maeve Fitzgerald, Jim Norton is Father Xavier, Garrett Keogh is Doctor Tuttle, and Ronan Wilmot is Liam O'Grady. T.P. McKenna, one of the great Irish stage actors, makes Montserrat a dealer you enjoy hating.

The episode went out in March 1993, and the Irish setting suits the show: the weather and the talk do some of the work. It is a satisfying assembly of locations and characters, with a lovely sense of Irish atmosphere. The professional pursuit of art history and the immediate concern for a woman's welfare run alongside each other, and the Book of Clonmel, however lost it is supposed to be, keeps the pace steady all the way through.