A Bouquet of Barbed Wine

The wine is British, which should have been the first warning. Arthur buys a large consignment from Herbie Collins, who swears it was made by the Blessed Brothers of Saint Bidolph in Kent, and plans to pass it off as something grand for the local corner shop. Then Collins is arrested, the warehouse is chained up pending an inventory, and Arthur's capital sits behind a locked door.

Ray and Arthur break in under cover of darkness, because that is the kind of business Arthur conducts, and they carry out the cases they have already paid for like professionals who have never been caught. The tasting that follows is a disaster, and the pair end up locked in the warehouse overnight with the evidence of their bad judgement. Arthur, undeterred, stages an official launch of Bulldog Wines PLC at the Winchester. The launch is the best part of the whole enterprise. Every bottle has been corked, and the vintage is about as saleable as engine coolant.

Philip McGough plays the dodgy Collins, Emma Cunningham is Gloria, Charlie Roe is Parnham, Dimitri Andreas is Artemis and Julia St John is Miss Fuller. Glynn Edwards keeps the bar, and Nicholas Day and Stephen Tompkinson are on hand as Morley and Park. Kevin McNally, Bernard Dempsey and Leon Griffiths wrote it, and Diarmuid Lawrence directed.

The wine is terrible, the scheme collapses, and Arthur still treats the whole thing as a setback rather than a verdict on his business sense. That is the charm of him. Bulldog Wines PLC is a monument to a streak that no amount of bad luck can cure. You almost admire the man's refusal to learn anything.

And I have never tasted British wine made by monks in Kent. After this episode, I am not sure I want to.