Diamonds Are a Girl's Worst Enemy

Property brings out the worst in everyone this week, starting at the top. Kate, a landlady, hires Terry to put the muscle on a young couple of squatters, and Terry quickly works out that the eviction is not legal at all: she wants them out to make way for richer tenants. Terry does the job he was given and then does the job he should have been given, and Kate's plans start to come apart. Arthur, meanwhile, has decided that his first move into the property market is to sell Terry's flat from under him.

But then the day properly goes sideways. Terry is working for Rose Mellors, a gangster's wife, when the car he is driving is stolen, and the car happens to contain a bag of diamonds hidden inside. Everyone scrambles to recover the gems before the police trace the vehicle and find what a gangster's wife would rather they didn't. The diamonds give the hour its engine, and the property schemes give it its teeth. There is a race against the clock and against the law, and Terry is in the middle of both.

Paul Wheeler and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Christopher King directed. Dennis Waterman and George Cole lead, with Ann Lynn as Rose Mellors, Tony Selby as Jack and George Layton as Des. Glynn Edwards, John Ringham, Sam Kydd, Celia Foxe and Howard Attfield complete the cast.

The title has the right idea. Diamonds are the trouble here, and the girls' worst enemy turns out to be a whole chain of people: the man who stole the car, the man who hid the diamonds, the landlady, and Arthur. It all comes back to Terry in the end, because it always does, and he gets through the day with his honesty mostly intact, which puts him ahead of almost everyone else in the episode.