If Money Be the Food of Love, Play On

Dee Rogers arrives at the Winchester fresh from Australia, and within an hour she has charmed everyone in the room, most of all Arthur. She is looking for a missing fiancé, a man who came to England and vanished, and she needs help finding him. Arthur, who can resist very little that flatters his self-image as a man of the world, agrees to help. Anyone watching will guess the shape of this before Arthur does. Dee is not what she seems.

The missing fiancé is a partner in crime. The pair of them ran a big con back in Australia, and he fled with her share of the money. Dee isn't searching for romance; she's hunting a man who owes her, and Arthur has volunteered to be her guide. You half want Arthur to spot the con and save himself, and the other half of you wants to watch him walk into it. Penny Downie plays Dee with a bright, practised warmth that makes the reveal feel less like a betrayal and more like the point of the exercise. Larry Lamb is Greg Collins, the friend along for the ride.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote the script, Terry Green directed. Glynn Edwards appears as Dave, Peter Childs as Rycott, Patrick Monckton as Carp, Barry Jackson as Mournful, Keith Bell as Gary Mitchell and Julianne White as Sandra. Dennis Waterman and George Cole hold the middle of the story.

The episode is a slow-burn reversal, the kind where the audience is allowed to stay slightly ahead of Arthur and enjoy watching him catch up. His helpful nature runs straight into a practised facade and comes off second best, which is rarer than it should be. The title, borrowed from Shakespeare and put to work on a pair of con artists, is the episode's best joke. But by the end everyone has been conned a little, except perhaps Dee, who knew the rules all along.