Poetic Licence

A friend of Charlotte's runs a nursing home and wants to sell some of its antiques, so Charlotte asks Lovejoy to help with the valuations. One patient, Virginia, believes she has a very rare bureau among the collection, and the appraisal starts out as the usual dusty afternoon's work. Then somebody tries to kill Lovejoy.

The attempts on his life escalate, and Charlotte makes a striking connection: Lovejoy's appearance reminds her strongly of a dead poet. The resemblance suggests the motive behind the violence runs deeper than robbery, into literary history and the secrets of past lives. Tinker and Beth are dispatched to London in search of answers, while Lovejoy stays where the danger is, trying to work out why a nursing home valuation has turned into a murder attempt. It aired in October 1993 under Gordon Flemyng, a director whose career reached back to Doctor Who in the 1960s, with T.R. Bowen, another television veteran, on the writing team. The guest cast includes Susan Fleetwood, sister of Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood, and Anna Calder-Marshall, both stage-trained actresses who give the nursing home its eerie credibility. It is a credit list of old hands, which suits a story about the past refusing to stay buried.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and T.R. Bowen wrote it, Gordon Flemyng directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish, and Diane Parish is Beth Taylor. Anna Calder-Marshall plays Virginia Moncrieff, Susan Fleetwood is Mary Gladden, Hugh Ross is Adrian Stoneleigh-Stibbs, Maggie Ollerenshaw is Kate Henshaw, Margery Mason is Mrs Mulligan, and David Blustone is Mr Schulz.

It is satisfying viewing to watch a quiet afternoon of dusty valuations spiral into genuine peril. Even in seemingly ordinary settings, the echoes of history lurk just beneath the surface, and Lovejoy's resemblance to a man long dead turns out to be the most dangerous thing about him. The bureau, for once, is the least of the mystery.