Whose Wife Is It Anyway?

Arthur goes to the hospital to see Alex Brompton, an old friend who has been knocked down in what the police are calling a hit-and-run. Terry volunteers to mind Alex's antique shop while the poor man recovers, which is the kind of favour that sounds simple and never is. Whether the accident was really an accident turns out to be beside the point. The point is that Alex, for all his charm, has collected enemies the way his shop collects dust.

Terry settles into the shop and starts listening, and what he hears is a long list of people who are glad Alex is off the streets for a while. The neighbourhood has opinions, and they are not kind. It becomes a question of working out which grudge was strong enough to put a man in hospital, while Arthur handles the delicate business of being Alex's friend and everybody else's. The mystery stays small and human, told through the people who walk through the shop door, and Terry finds himself minding more than the furniture.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote it, with Roy Ward Baker directing. George Cole and Dennis Waterman front the cast, and David Daker makes Alex Brompton convincingly complicated as the man everyone has a reason to dislike. Janet Key plays Gloria Brompton, with Alun Lewis, John Forgeham, Peter Cheevers, Molly Veness, David Auker and Glynn Edwards in support.

It is a gentler kind of episode, more about a community's grudges than about gunplay, and all the better for it. Terry spends the hour minding a shop and finding out the truth about his friend, which is a different sort of work and a harder one. And Alex, in the end, gets what he needs: a minder who minds. Whether he deserves him is another question, and the episode is wise enough not to answer it.