Dainty Dish

The Lovejoy Antiques team is in Brighton on a working holiday, scouring the town for a really grand set of old china. Charlie Gimbert, as ever, causes some havoc, and there is the story of the antique chairs to contend with. Then, on the china trail, Lovejoy chances on a stunning rip-off involving hundreds of porcelain plates.

The heart of the episode is Louise, a friend of Jane's, the widow of a Belgian baron and resistance hero. She possesses a valuable porcelain plate, part of a larger dinner service stolen by the Nazis during the war. That wartime theft gives the china a weight the seaside setting would not otherwise carry. With the help of Olwyn, a psychic with a mixed record, Lovejoy tracks down the rest of the scattered service. His only complaint about Olwyn is grammatical: one of her predictions was not even correctly worded, which tells you what he thinks of the trade. And in among the china and the chairs, Jane finally confesses her feelings for Lovejoy to Louise, the sort of quiet scene that lands harder than any plot twist.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Jeremy Paul wrote it, John Woods directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert, Renée Asherson is the Baroness, Linda Marlowe is Olwyn, Tim Stern is Loosemore, and Jane Hazlegrove is Yvonne. Renée Asherson, a distinguished stage actress, plays the Baroness with quiet dignity, and John Savident, later of Coronation Street, is Cecil. The episode went out in March 1993.

It is satisfying to watch these familiar faces work a case rooted in grand historical theft and intimate personal confession at the same time. Brighton does the china proud, and Lovejoy does the decent thing, which for once costs him nothing but his dignity.