The Long Ride Back to Scratchwood

Arthur buys two thousand tickets for the England-Scotland match at Wembley from an ex-Liverpool footballer called Benno Benson, and immediately plans to drive north and sell them to Scottish fans. Two thousand tickets, sold to the supporters of the away team, on their own ground. Even for Arthur, this is ambitious. It is the kind of scheme that depends on nobody checking the tickets, which is to say it depends on something Arthur has never been able to rely on.

Terry comes along because he always does, and Justin James, the eager young apprentice, comes along because he has not yet learned to say no. The three of them head north with a car full of paper. The tickets, naturally, are forgeries. Benno Benson is a con-man, the whole enterprise is counterfeit from the first whistle, and somewhere behind them a van-load of very angry men is gaining. Justin is new enough to still believe Arthur knows what he is doing, and the episode uses him as a kind of barometer: the further north they drive, the more his faith drops.

Arthur's schemes usually fail at home, among people who know him. This one comes apart on the open road, in front of strangers, and the episode leans into the discomfort. The further north they go, the thinner the plan gets, until the ride back to Scratchwood starts to look like the best part of the trip.

Leon Griffiths wrote it, Terry Green directed. Dennis Waterman is Terry, George Cole is Arthur, Mark Farmer plays Justin James and Alan Hunter plays Steve Benson, with James Marcus as Phil, Jon Croft as Alisdair Frazier, Derek Martin as Cedric, David Beale as Theo Warren, Brian Haines as a Tax Inspector, Nicolas Chagrin as Mario and Glynn Edwards as Dave.

And the title is both promise and warning. Whatever happened at Wembley, Arthur's journey is the one that keeps going, all the way back to a motorway service area that never sounded so far away.