The Lost Colony

When a descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh sells his home and its contents, Lovejoy meets an American woman whose name is also Lovejoy. Mary-John Lovejoy is beautiful, charming, and, as it turns out, thoroughly larcenous. Several antiques go missing along with the woman, and Lovejoy tracks them all the way back to North Carolina. The episode aired on 27 December 1993, the series' Christmas outing, and it makes the most of its transatlantic setting.

The trail uncovers an elaborate scam: the woman and her brother are operating a scheme to claim an inheritance, and the antiques are the machinery of it. The deception is skilled enough to get Lovejoy himself placed in jail, which is where Charlotte Cavendish appears, arriving at precisely the right moment to help him out. Together they work through the complexities of American law and history to bring the pair to justice, and the Christmas special gets its proper seasonal mix of goodwill and retribution.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Dick Clement wrote it, Geoffrey Sax directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish. Diane Parish is Beth Taylor and Malcolm Tierney is Charlie Gimbert. The guest cast is a treat: Barbara Barrie as Miss Lillian, John Gielgud as Lord Wakering, Ken Kercheval as Rutherford Lovejoy, Kate Vernon as Mary-John Lovejoy, and Alex Van as Officer Lemmon. Ken Kercheval, best known to American viewers as Cliff Barnes in Dallas, plays Rutherford Lovejoy, and John Gielgud brings lordly weight to Lord Wakering.

The episode takes the series across the Atlantic and gives Lovejoy a surname-twin who is everything he pretends not to be. A Raleigh descendant, an American jail cell, and a rescue at the last minute: the Lost Colony lives up to its name, and Lovejoy gets his own back on both sides of the pond.