Swings and Roundabouts

Boswell, a friend of Lovejoy's who runs a travelling fair, is facing a financial pinch and asks Lovejoy to sell some silver candlesticks for him. The candlesticks are supposedly valuable enough to solve his immediate problems. Then the police arrive, announcing that the items are stolen property, and Boswell is arrested on the spot. A simple favour turns into a charge of theft. Phil Daniels, best known for Quadrophenia and a long run in EastEnders, plays Boyd, and Jimmy Jewel, one half of the music hall duo Jewel and Warriss, is Boswell. The episode aired in November 1993, and the title, a fairground proverb about losses evening out, describes the deal Boswell gets rather neatly. The carousel thread gives the story its most wistful image, a whole way of life priced up and put on offer.

While Lovejoy deals with the fallout at the fairground, Charlotte's American friend shows an interest in buying the entire carousel section of the carnival. The two threads keep the focus tight: the immediate danger to Boswell, and the larger economic anxieties hanging over the travelling show itself. A fairground is a fragile economy, all bright paint and borrowed money, and this episode knows it.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Gawn Grainger wrote it, Ken Horn directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Maggie Ollerenshaw is Kate Henshaw. Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish, Diane Parish is Beth Taylor, and Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert. Phil Daniels plays Boyd, Jimmy Jewel is Boswell, Gary Waldhorn is Sergeant Pulver, and James Carroll Jordan is Ed Taylor.

The episode finds small-scale human drama inside a contained local mystery, which is the series' great strength. A pair of candlesticks, a carousel, and an old showman's reputation: the value of the silver matters less than the cost of the accusation. Boswell's name is cleared, more or less, and the fair rolls on.