Hypnotising Rita

Rita is an heiress due to inherit £25,000, and she is engaged to Dr. Sudbury, a hypnotherapist whose best explanation for the engagement is the word hypnotised. Her family are convinced the doctor has put her under to get at the money, and they want her away from him. Arthur and Terry, in the great tradition of the show, help the couple escape the disapproving family. It seems chivalrous. It is not. The family's complaint sounds like paranoia, which is exactly why Arthur and Terry take the couple's side.

Because Sudbury turns out to be exactly what the family said he was. When the money is withheld, the doctor disappears, and takes the funds with him. Rita, desperate, tries to take her own life, and the episode turns from a soft romance into something harder without fuss.

Terry, meanwhile, has discovered the second career that will define his year: steam-cleaning. As a steam-cleaning operative he becomes, to his evident surprise, a hit with the local ladies, who take an interest in his services that has nothing to do with carpets. Dennis Waterman plays Terry's bewilderment at his own popularity with a perfectly straight face. It is the show's favourite trick, balancing a genuinely grim plot against Terry's unrelated and inexplicably popular sideline.

Terry eventually finds out where Sudbury is hiding and tells Rita's brothers, who sort the doctor out in the traditional way. Alan Janes and Leon Griffiths wrote the episode, Terry Green directed. Dennis Waterman is Terry, George Cole is Arthur, Nicola Cowper plays Rita, Donald Sumpter plays Dr. Sudbury, with June Brown as Joany, Ray Burdis as Jimmy Elliot, Renu Setna as Mr. Sharma, Frank Williams as Mr. Chicory, Margery Withers as the Lady in Flat and Glynn Edwards as Dave.

And somewhere between the suicide attempt and the steam-cleaning, you remember why the show worked. It could be dark, and then it could be daft, and it never once apologised for either.