A Little Bit of Give and Take

This one is a genuine oddity, even by Minder standards. It was made in 1986 as a public information film for the Department of Health and Social Security, aimed at schoolchildren. But it never went out on the ordinary schedules, and only turned up on television later, as a DVD extra, having been sent to schools and health authorities as part of a video package called Double Take.

The set-up is familiar enough. Arthur's old friend Charlie Barker is in prison, and his son Shaun turns up asking for somewhere to kip. Arthur, all set for a trip to the 'Costa Packet' with 'er indoors, dumps the lad on Terry, who is left to look after him. It's a babysitting job with a moral attached, and Terry approaches it with the same wary courtesy he brings to any Daley errand. Shaun then has to make the tough calls when he's confronted with the prospect of taking drugs.

All twenty-eight minutes of it are built around that single choice, and the messaging doesn't mess about. It's blunt, as public information films tend to be, and the charm of seeing Arthur Daley's world pressed into the service of a moral lesson never quite wears off. George Cole, Dennis Waterman and Glynn Edwards do their usual turns, with Christopher Routh as Shaun, Adam Armstrong as Tim, Lee Martin Gotch as Lee, Elaine Lordan as Sharon, Martin Tempest as Darren, and Roy Beck and Eric Kent propping up the Winchester Club.

Richard Smith and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Christopher Menaul directed.

It sits oddly in the Minder canon, this one: a schoolroom lecture wearing the clothes of a sitcom, and all the more fascinating for it. You can imagine the classrooms of 1986 watching Arthur sell his way through a drugs lecture and wondering quite what they'd let themselves in for.