Gunfight at the OK Launderette

The very first outing is a model of the formula. Arthur sends Terry out on what should be a nothing job: go with his friend Alfie Cavallo while he collects the takings from the launderette he owns. It should take ten minutes. Instead, a bungled armed robbery goes off inside the shop, and Terry and Alfie end up hostages in a siege with the police forming up outside. The title is a Western joke, and the siege that follows plays it mostly straight.

Terry handles the danger with the professional calm you'd expect. Arthur handles it rather differently. While his minder is staring down the business end of a robbery, Arthur sees the press gathering and starts trying to sell Terry's life story to the newspapers, because even a hostage situation is a market opportunity if you look at it the right way. That's the partnership in one gesture: Terry in genuine peril, Arthur in genuine profit, and the whole arrangement already fully formed on day one.

The siege plays out with the expected cast of local faces, Mrs. Mayhew, Winston, Cosmo, Liz, Stretch and the Chief Superintendent among them, but the pleasure of the episode is watching the two leads work the same crisis from opposite ends. Dennis Waterman and George Cole are backed by Dave King as Alfie, Trevor Thomas as Stretch, Hilary Mason as Mrs. Mayhew, William Vanderpuye as Winston, Leroi Samuels as Cosmo, Linda Regan as Liz, Glynn Edwards as Dave and Donald Burton as the Chief Superintendent.

Leon Griffiths wrote it, Peter Sasdy directed.

And that's the funny thing about the whole set-up. Terry is in the launderette getting held at gunpoint, and his boss is outside trying to flog his life story to the tabloids. No wonder their partnership lasted as long as it did. There's nobody else who'd put up with him.