A Going Concern

Lovejoy has been left to look after Felsham Hall until it is sold, and he uses the house as a furniture showroom, filling the grand rooms with antiques both genuine and debatable. The receivers do not approve, and neither does Charlotte Cavendish, the beautiful auctioneer retained to sell off the Hall's considerable contents. He wants to curate; she wants to liquidate. The friction is the episode. Aired in September 1993, it is the first episode without Phyllis Logan's Lady Jane, and Caroline Langrishe's Charlotte Cavendish steps in as the new regular, appearing in every remaining episode of the run. Her auctioneer and McShane's dealer spar well enough that the show kept them together. Patricia Hayes, a fixture of British comedy for decades, is among the guests as Lady Alfreston.

The clash builds to the actual sale, where Charlie Gimbert buys the property itself. Lovejoy negotiates with him to rent the stables for Lovejoy Antiques, which gives the firm a base of operations tied to the life of the estate he had only been temporarily overseeing. An ending that manages to be both practical and faintly elegiac: the Hall changes hands, and Lovejoy gets a roof over his stock out of it.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Steve Coombes wrote it, and Ian McShane directed, in his final turn behind the camera for the series. Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole, and Caroline Langrishe plays Charlotte Cavendish. Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert, Patricia Hayes is Lady Alfreston, Susan Kyd is Mrs Webb, David Weston is Geoffrey, Jane Lowe is Camilla, and Maggie Ollerenshaw is Kate Henshaw.

It is a pleasure to watch Lovejoy move through the delicate meeting of history and commerce. Even tasked with merely observing an estate's decline, he finds room for personal enterprise within its grand walls. The stables are not Felsham Hall, but they are a start, and in this trade a start is usually enough.