Back in Good Old England

Jack 'Oily' Wragg is back, and Terry isn't sure how to feel about it. Wragg left the country in a hurry years ago after a bank robbery, the sort of departure that doesn't leave a forwarding address. Now he's turned up in London again, greeting old faces as if he'd only popped out for a paper. The Winchester doesn't get many visitors from the old days, and the ones who come back usually want something. But Terry knows better than to trust a man who smiles that easily.

The reason for the homecoming emerges soon enough. Wragg wants to re-group his old gang for one more job, another bank, one last score, and he works through the old crew one by one, testing who still has the nerve. The old enthusiasm doesn't catch the way it once did, and the warmth Wragg expects starts to look like politeness. The reunion scenes carry the episode, men who have moved on with their lives being asked to step back into a past they'd rather have left in the vault. Pete Postlethwaite plays Wragg with a slippery charm that makes everyone's hesitation feel earned, and George Layton's Des shows what the years have done to the rest of them.

Andrew Payne and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Francis Megahy directed. Dennis Waterman and George Cole lead, with Peter Childs as Rycott, David Hargreaves as Archie, Norman Beaton as Billy, George Camiller as Angelis, Tariq Yunus as Chris and Barry McCarthy as Neville.

There's a melancholy under the comedy, the sense of men measuring themselves against the young men they used to be, and Terry's wary respect for Wragg is the heart of it. Some homecomings are pleasant. This one is neither, and the episode is the better for admitting it. The old gang were never going to ride again, and everyone knows it but Wragg.