The Loneliness of the Long Distance Entrepreneur

Terry leaves for Australia without telling anyone, leaving Arthur his old Capri and nothing else. It is a quiet exit for a man who spent seven series at Arthur's side, and Arthur, never one for sentiment, simply needs a new minder. His nephew Ray gets the job, on terms so like Terry's that you wonder whether Arthur keeps a template in the lock-up somewhere.

Ray is not a fighter in Terry's class, but he proves capable enough, and his real weapon is French. It comes in handy when Arthur, expanding his business interests onto the Continent, discovers he is involved with drug smugglers. Ray is sent to Brussels to pick up a car, and the errand turns into the sort of afternoon Arthur had hoped to avoid. The French gets them out of it, and Arthur is not arrested for trafficking, which he treats as a personal triumph rather than a lucky escape.

George Cole and Gary Webster make the new double act work from the first scene. Glynn Edwards is behind the bar as Dave, Nicholas Day's Morley and Stephen Tompkinson's Park hover on the edges, and Vania Vilers, Lill Roughley, Sidney Livingstone, Allie Byrne and Roberta Taylor fill out the guest list. There is a new nervousness in the air, the way there always is when a long partnership changes hands, but the show does not dwell on it. David Yallop and Leon Griffiths wrote it; Diarmuid Lawrence directed.

The change of minder could have sunk the programme. Instead, this opener suggests the formula will survive, because the formula was never really about Terry. It was about a man who will always need a minder and another who will always take the job on worse terms than he deserves. Ray walking into that arrangement is the most natural thing in the world.

And Arthur still has the Capri, which is more than Terry got.