You Lose Some, You Win Some

Terry has booked a quiet week with Penny, which is a dangerous thing to do, because the universe notices. Maurice Michaelson, a professional gambler of Arthur's acquaintance, has assembled a team of people who can win big at the casino's roulette tables, and they need somewhere to hide between sessions so the house does not catch on. Arthur, generous as ever with other people's property, offers Terry's flat. Terry, who had plans involving Penny and very little else, discovers that his sitting room is now a gambling den with a timetable.

The episode then takes a simple comic idea and squeezes it. Terry's flat fills with professional winners who are trying not to look like winners, the casino starts to protest about the suspicious goings-on, and Penny, who has taken the whole week off to be with him, is not at all impressed by the new housemates. Every quiet moment Terry hoped for is spent hiding people, counting chips and explaining himself to a girlfriend whose patience is a professional-grade commodity. The roulette system works, which is the problem, because success is harder to hide than failure.

Jeremy Burnham and Leon Griffiths wrote it, James Gatward directed. Dennis Waterman and George Cole are joined by Anthony Valentine as Maurice, who has the charm of a man who wins for a living, and Gennie Nevinson as the increasingly unimpressed Penny. Beth Morris, Peggy Thorpe-Bates, Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Clifford Parrish, Angela Easterling and Kenneth Midwood support.

But there is real comedy in watching a professional criminal operation die of domesticity. The gamblers are polite, the chips are stacked, and Terry's romance is bleeding out on the rug. Penny deserves better, and everybody knows it except the people upstairs with the winning numbers. Whether Maurice ever shares the winnings with the man whose sofa he borrowed is a question the episode wisely leaves open.