Days of Fines and Closures

Dave's relief manager lets him down at short notice, so Terry steps in to run the Winchester Club. The next day Dave fails to show up at all. He has gone missing on a day trip to France, and nobody knows where he is. A day without Dave is a day when nothing runs properly, and the regulars notice.

And that leaves Terry and Arthur to attend court in his place, because the club's licence needs renewing and only Dave was going to handle it. Detective Sergeant Rycott opposes the application firmly, which is his way of being helpful. To make things properly awkward, Dave's wife decides Arthur is behind the disappearance and calls in the police. Arthur, suspected of making Dave vanish, has to argue for the club's licence while the husband of the woman accusing him is somewhere in France, very probably fine. Nobody has the first idea where Dave has got to, and France is a big place to lose a man.

Glynn Edwards is Dave, mostly absent and therefore in his element. Peter Childs's Rycott glowers, George Baker is Cooper, and Thorley Walters brings a stately confusion to the Magistrate. Tony Selby is Muldoon, Mark Farmer is Justin and Del Henney is Tombo. Arthur's solution, naturally, involves somebody else paying for everything, but this time even he cannot see the way out.

David Yallop and Leon Griffiths wrote it, and William Brayne directed. Dennis Waterman is Terry, George Cole is Arthur, and Michael Povey is Jones. George Baker's Cooper keeps a quiet eye on the proceedings.

The Winchester without Dave runs like a ship without a captain, and the episode gets a lot of mileage out of watching Terry try to be everyone's favourite barman while Arthur does his level best to be no help at all. Even the court scene, usually the dullest part of any licensing story, is kept alive by Rycott's quiet fury.