Three Men and a Brittle Lady

Charlotte Cavendish is dealing with the fallout of being robbed at her home, and her former lover arrives from New York to invite her to live with him in Paris. She turns him down, which is the kind of decision this show likes to leave hanging in the air. Meanwhile Charlie Gimbert has been conned by a forger into buying what he believes is genuine porcelain, and the china figurine stolen from him at an auction needs recovering.

Lovejoy takes on both cases. He helps Charlotte find the thieves who emptied her house, and he catches up with the forger who gulled Gimbert. In the process he discovers a genuinely skilled artist, which is the sort of silver lining the trade occasionally hands out: the faker was good enough to fool Gimbert, and good enough to be worth something real. It went out in early October 1993 with two familiar faces in the guest list: Jonathan Hyde, later of Jumanji and Titanic, and Lionel Jeffries, the veteran comedian best remembered as Grandpa Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The former lover's invitation to Paris is the episode's quiet centre, and Charlotte's refusal is handled without a single grand speech. Lovejoy, as ever, notices everything and says almost nothing about it.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Douglas Watkinson wrote it, Nicholas Laughland directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole, Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish, and Diane Parish is Beth Taylor. Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert, Jonathan Hyde plays Jonathan Wilsher, Lionel Jeffries is Percy Broderick, Eve Matheson is Valerie Endacott, and Gary Waldhorn is Bob Pulver.

The episode keeps several plates spinning, moving between high-stakes forgery and plain burglary without losing its focus on character. Charlotte gets her home sorted and her love life politely declined, Gimbert gets his figurine back, and Lovejoy ends the week having done actual good, which he always finds faintly embarrassing.