Taking the Pledge

Jamie, an old friend of Lovejoy's, turns up on his doorstep needing help with an urgent problem. He cannot afford to retrieve a wonderful painting, a valuable heirloom watercolor miniature, from a pawnbroker, and there are only a few hours left before it is lost. Lovejoy agrees at once to help raise the cash.

The clock is the villain here. Every minute spent manoeuvring through sticky domesticity is a minute closer to losing the miniature for good. Jamie's estranged wife is on the warpath, adding her own considerable difficulty to the already fraught circumstances, and the usual supporting cast each bring their specific brand of complication or assistance. The pawnshop's deadline is the whole engine of the piece, and the episode never lets you forget it. It is a contained, ticking affair, the kind Lovejoy does best when the object matters less than the person holding it.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Alan Clews wrote it, Baz Taylor directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole, and Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert. Simon Dutton is Iain, Perry Fenwick is Ron Steigers, Jane Merrow is Stella, and Nina Marc is Anya. Jack Shepherd, a year or two before he became television's Wycliffe, plays Jamie with a worn, quiet dignity, and Perry Fenwick, later EastEnders' Billy Mitchell, is Ron Steigers.

It went out in April 1993, late in the fourth season. The episode is a fine study in friendship and its costs. Jamie, once a man of means and now homeless, needs his old friend's help to redeem a piece of his past, and Lovejoy gives it without a second thought. A simple item of art acts as the fulcrum for detailed personal drama, and the miniature is redeemed with minutes to spare, which is the only kind of ending worth having.