You Need Hands

Terry agrees to help Des collect a debt and comes away with a broken hand. The debt collection is the kind of job that pays badly and hurts worse, and this time it does both. Arthur, who has just landed a job guarding a consignment of diamonds being shipped out, is not sympathetic. He needs a minder with two working fists, so he hires one. His name is Vernon, and Vernon is what you get when you can't get Terry.

The diamonds, as it happens, are not diamonds. The consignment is drugs, and Arthur, who rarely looks too closely at a cargo when money is being offered, has walked into the middle of a smuggling operation that is not interested in his excuses. The men who set the job up know exactly what is in the boxes and do not do refunds. Arthur, for once, is the last to find out. But someone has to go and fetch him. It is going to be Terry, with one good hand, and Des along for the ride.

Andrew Payne and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Ian Sharp directed. Julian Holloway is Matthews, Alan MacNaughtan is Merrick, Harry Landis is Lenny Bowman, Martin Fisk is the security guard, and Gareth Milne and Richard Clay-Jones fill out the rest. Mike Reid, years before EastEnders, is Vernon. George Layton is Des, the man who started the whole mess by asking for a hand. Dennis Waterman and George Cole anchor the lot.

The joke is in the title, and the plot knows it. Terry's hand is broken because he helped a friend, and Arthur's trouble starts because Terry wasn't there to help him. They only work together. The episode spends an hour proving it. It is a quiet little episode, but it knows exactly what it is doing. And the title pun is worth every groan it gets.