Fruit of the Dessert

Lovejoy has a dangerous plan. He buys a collection of Islamic antiques from a retired diplomat, Harold Plumb, who warns him that by rights some of the collection should have gone to the Foreign Office. To finance the purchase, Lovejoy puts himself in the hands of a notorious moneylender, John Hill, and offers the deeds to his daughter's flat as collateral. Those who hazard all do it in hope of fair advantages, and Lovejoy is hoping for a very fair one indeed. The episode aired on 20 November 1994, and the deal with the moneylender is a gamble of the kind Lovejoy usually avoids.

The scheme unravels quickly. The police take an interest, and a visit to the Foreign Office reveals the troubling truth: Plumb is a con-man who stole the very articles in question. The collection is hot, the loan shark holds the deeds to Vicky's flat, and Lovejoy has run out of road. Helped by Charlotte, he stages an extremely elaborate charade to get the deeds back from Hill, a performance that requires every ounce of the charm and brass neck he has spent six series accumulating.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Terry Hodgkinson wrote it, Paul Harrison directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Caroline Langrishe is Charlotte Cavendish. Frank Finlay plays Harold Plumb, Terence Rigby is John Hill, Clare Byam-Shaw is Rachel, Christopher Benjamin is Walid, Bernard Spear is Morrie Samuels, Amelia Curtis is Viki, and Dominic Taylor is Piers Dow. Finlay, an Oscar nominee for Othello, plays Plumb with the smoothness a good con-man needs, and Rigby gives the moneylender Hill a quiet, watchful menace.

It is a taut piece of work, and a reminder of how thoroughly intertwined Lovejoy's professional curiosity is with his personal life. The antiques were always going to be trouble; the flat was never supposed to be. That the deeds end up back where they belong is down to Charlotte, and Lovejoy knows it.