Monday Night Fever

Arthur has decided that Sharon Dobbs, a club singer, deserves the big time. Sharon's looks get noticed a lot more often than her voice. But Arthur hears opportunity, and he talks her into a booking at a club run by Chris Lambert. Lambert welshes on the arrangement almost before the ink dries. Terry refuses to go and lean on the man, which is the sensible position, so Arthur looks elsewhere for muscle and finds Vic Piner, a man whose reputation for violence travels well ahead of him. What began as a bad booking deal now looks as though it might end in murder.

The neat part is that Terry was right to refuse, and Arthur knows it. That has never once stopped Arthur. He presses on with the idea that he is Sharon's patron and protector, one admiring glance away from a richer life, while everyone around him quietly waits for the crash. Dave and Chisholm hover at the edges of the trouble, which is what they always do. By the time the scheme has grown teeth, only Terry can pull them, and he has to wade in to stop Piner from doing something that nobody could walk back.

Leon Griffiths wrote it and Mike Vardy directed. George Cole and Dennis Waterman carry the week, with Sheila White as Sharon, Eric Deacon as the unscrupulous Lambert, Brian Croucher as Big John and Anthony Heaton as Vic Piner, the wild card who turns a business dispute into a matter of life and death. Glynn Edwards, Patrick Malahide, Gennie Nevinson and Peter Blake fill out the supporting cast.

It is a familiar shape for the show, the good deed that curdles into danger, but there is real fondness here for Sharon, who is never blamed for the trouble she attracts. Arthur means well. That is the whole problem. He means well, and other people pay the bill.