The Price of Fish

Lovejoy is invited to spend the weekend with Charlotte at her best friend's house, a Victorian manor with a school reunion attached. The friend is short of money and has a clock she wants valued, but Lovejoy's attention is caught by something else entirely: a stuffed fish, which turns out to be worth selling. The clock waits, the fish gets noticed, and misunderstandings arise, as they do whenever Lovejoy goes anywhere socially. The episode went out on 28 November 1993, late in series five, and the weekend visit shows how quickly Lovejoy's eye for a bargain can derail a social occasion.

Back at Felsham Hall, the other war is being fought. Tinker is keen to thwart Charlie Gimbert's plans to turn the Hall into a health farm, and after studying a twelfth-century charter he starts grazing a flock of sheep around the grounds. Gimbert responds by threatening to evict Lovejoy Antiques from the stable yard, and the standoff deepens until Tinker and Beth decide a trip to a real health farm is in order, presumably for research.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Andy de la Tour wrote it, Jim Hill directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish, Diane Parish is Beth Taylor, and Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert. Sarah Berger plays Hattie, Barbara Ewing is Sheila, Margaretta Scott is Mabel Horsham, Felicity Dean is Samantha Drake-Pemberton, and John Boswall is Peter Horsham. A veteran of the British stage, Scott had been acting since the 1930s, and the reunion scenes give the older generation their due.

It is a tidy knot of historical fuss and neighbourly disagreement. A twelfth-century charter, a flock of sheep, a stuffed fish and a health farm: the episode has all the ingredients of a very British standoff, and it stirs them with a straight face. Gimbert's eviction notice and Tinker's counter-attack keep the series' running battle rolling nicely.