Ducking and Diving

Tinker and Eric take a break at Eric's Uncle Jack's pub, with Warren Mitchell returning as the uncle, and the pair of them settle into a relative domesticity that suits them far better than it should. Meanwhile Lovejoy is asked to show a visiting couple around the antiques shops, and he also has a very large Welsh Dresser to get rid of, which is the kind of chore that sounds simple and never is. Eric, seeing his moment, decides to stay on and run the pub. Warren Mitchell, forever known to British viewers as Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part, makes Uncle Jack feel lived-in from his first scene. The episode went out in October 1993 as a comfortable mid-series entry, with the regulars doing most of the work while a Metropolitan DCI with a grudge does the pushing. Reece Dinsdale, a familiar face from eighties sitcoms like Home to Roost, plays the copper.

The professional complications arrive in the shape of a Metropolitan DCI, an antiques specialist determined to pin a robbery on Lovejoy. The accusation lands while Lovejoy is up to his elbows in unwanted furniture and polite visitors, and the episode gets its rhythm from watching him duck and dive between the two. There is no high-speed chase here, just a dealer out of his depth in his own trade, which is where the show is often at its best.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and John Milne wrote it, Jim Hill directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish, Diane Parish is Beth Taylor, and Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert. Reece Dinsdale plays Chief Inspector Sharpe, Selina Cadell is Ellen Parker, and Maggie Ollerenshaw is Kate Henshaw.

The episode is a pleasant breather from high-stakes chases, focusing instead on the domestic tensions that underpin any good investigation. A pub, a dresser, and a copper with a grudge: Lovejoy at his most ordinary, and therefore at his most entertaining.