A Nice Little Wine

Arthur's latest business idea is wine, which sounds respectable and costs money, two things he can never hold onto at the same time. The cash for the purchase is lifted from his supplier, Clive, and suddenly Terry and Arthur are running a classic pair-deuce investigation, tracking the thieves and trying to get the money back. Arthur's attitude to work is normally that somebody else should do it, so the sight of him investigating is worth the ticket price alone.

But the wine thread shares the hour with an old friend. Yorkie, Arthur's army comrade, is down in London for a night of ale and reminiscence when he disappears, and the search turns him up distressed and trouserless, a state he attributes to a visit to a lady of pleasure. His wife is on her way, so the job is not just finding the missing garment but finding a replacement before the questions start. Arthur, it must be said, takes the trousers far more seriously than he takes the robbery, and Terry is left to chase both problems while his partner runs damage control on Yorkie's marriage.

Stanley Price and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Christopher Menaul directed. Dennis Waterman and George Cole lead, with Peter Jeffrey as Clive, the robbed supplier, and Patrick Malahide as D.S. Chisholm. Rachel Davies, Lois Baxter, Ron Pember, Pam St. Clement, Diana Berriman and Davyd Harries fill out the cast.

Two problems, one professional and one personal, and neither one goes where you expect. The wine money and the trousers end up tangled in the same night, which is about right for this pair. Arthur's schemes rarely fail quietly, but they do fail entertainingly, and that is more than half the fun. It is not a grand episode, and it does not need to be; the smaller the scheme, the more room there is for Arthur to be Arthur.