Who Is the Fairest of Them All?

Jane's old dance teacher asks Lovejoy to sell a sinister-looking mirror belonging to the local ballet school. What should be a simple bit of antique liquidation leads into a deal involving the apparently one-eyed Roderick Frew, and Lovejoy's nose starts twitching at once. A mirror with a bad reputation is a fine start to a mystery. The title lifts its line from the magic mirror of the fairy tale, which suits an episode built around a mirror that people are afraid of. Roger Lloyd Pack, then best known as Trigger in Only Fools and Horses, plays Smallman-Smith, and his cheerful menace fits a show that keeps its villains friendly. It went out in September 1993, and the news about Felsham lands here as a deliberate blow to the series' settled order: after this, Lady Jane is gone from the credits.

Then Jane delivers some genuinely shocking news. Lord Alexander Felsham is broke. Felsham is in the hands of the receivers. And she is leaving. The financial turmoil throws a long shadow over everything, and Lovejoy is forced to confront not just local mysteries but questions of inheritance, stability, and what happens to a woman who has spent her life inside a grand house that is no longer hers.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Jeremy Paul 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. John Hallam plays Roderick Frew, Roger Lloyd Pack is Smallman-Smith, Colette O'Neil is Miss Robiette, Pavel Douglas is Lord Alexander Felsham, Jane How is Mrs De Vere Hunt, and Bridget McConnell is Verity.

The mirror is the excuse, but the real subject is the deep entanglement between an object's history, the people who own it, and the financial structures meant to preserve them. When the money goes, the house goes, and so does the lady of it. Lovejoy, as ever, is left holding the questions.