It's A Sorry Lorry, Morrie

Terry is facing the prospect of another stretch in prison, and the reason is a stolen van full of electrical goods that he collected for Arthur. The police have staked out the whole vehicle, which is parked, watched, and already a trap. Terry has been here before, and he knows exactly what the inside of a cell looks like; the knowledge does not help. The only question is how long it takes Arthur to notice. Arthur, meanwhile, has his own worries: the used-car business is dead, which for Arthur is close to a personal tragedy.

But the plan they settle on is simple. Set fire to the lorry and walk away, evidence and all. It is the kind of solution that makes sense at two in the morning and nowhere else. Before they can strike a match, the police pounce, and Terry's prison sentence moves from a possibility to a probability. His panic is the engine of the episode, and Dennis Waterman plays it with a wide-eyed urgency that makes Arthur's casual approach to the whole disaster even funnier. Setting fire to stolen goods works in theory and fails in practice, and it fails here with some speed.

Roy Kinnear is Fat Charlie, Ronald Fraser is Self-Inflicted Sid, and James Marcus is Morrie, the man of the title. Garfield Morgan's Supt. Mason and Peter Childs's Rycott close in from the police side, while Michael Povey's Jones and Mark Farmer's Justin fill out the supporting cast.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote it, and Roy Ward Baker directed. George Cole is Arthur, Dennis Waterman is Terry, and Glynn Edwards is Dave.

The comedy comes from watching two men try to burn their way out of a problem that only exists because one of them bought a lorry full of stolen goods without asking where they came from. Terry pays for it. Arthur, as ever, has a scheme waiting.