An Officer and a Car Salesman

Terry McCann opens this special inside a prison cell, doing a stretch after getting caught up in one of Arthur Daley's shadier deals, and the partnership looks properly finished this time. Out of nick and out of patience, Terry takes work with Colonel Caplan, an ex-army officer running a survivalist centre in suburban England. What he doesn't know is that Arthur has been supplying Caplan with army surplus equipment all along, and the two men are shoved back into each other's orbit whether they like it or not.

Caplan's little enterprise is not what it seems. The colonel and his assembled 'troops' have their eyes on a bullion robbery, and the security for the job is being supervised by an old enemy: former detective sergeant Charlie Chisholm, who would cheerfully see both Arthur and Terry back behind bars. Terry has just got out of one prison; the plot is doing its best to aim him at another.

The casting alone is worth the price of admission. Richard Briers, television's least military man, plays Caplan with the brisk enthusiasm of a scoutmaster whose hobby has run away with him, and Patrick Malahide's Chisholm moves through the whole business radiating long-suffering menace. Dennis Waterman and George Cole slip back into their old partnership, with Glynn Edwards's Dave Harris, Peter Childs's DS Rycott, Michael Povey's DC Jones, Diana Quick's Angie, Mark McManus's Dixon and Simon Williams's Roger lending support.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote it, with Roy Ward Baker directing. The whole thing is essentially a reunion: a rogue colonel and a bullion job in the Home Counties, all serving as an excuse for Arthur and Terry to bicker their way back to something like normal.

And really, that's the point of the exercise. Give them a prison stretch and a robbery, throw in a copper with a grudge, and they still end up exactly where they started: squabbling and scheming, quietly glad to be working together again.