The Last Temptation of Daley

Arthur on the wagon is not a pretty sight. His doctor has told him to give up alcohol and tobacco or face a stomach ulcer, and the withdrawal is doing to his nerves what Benny McLeish is about to do to his day. McLeish, a building contractor, is furious about a paint deal that has gone sour and wants a refund. He threatens Arthur, who decides that everyone is after him and demands police protection.

The police decline, sensibly. Arthur, rather than face the world sober, hides at Ray's flat, then slips out behind his minder's back to buy the cigarettes and drink he is supposed to be avoiding. Ray, coming home to an empty flat, takes the more dramatic option and convinces the police that McLeish has abducted Arthur. The whole thing ends in a punch-up in a pub car park, with a good deal of confusion about who is rescuing whom.

Andrew McCulloch plays the mad McLeish, Terrence Hardiman is Dr Hardman, and Roger Brierley, Joanna Wake and Michael Watkins take the smaller roles. George Cole is in fine form as a man denied his two favourite things, Gary Webster's Ray gets the best of the comedy, and Glynn Edwards, Nicholas Day and Stephen Tompkinson keep the usual faces on duty. William Ivory and Leon Griffiths wrote it; Diarmuid Lawrence directed.

The episode runs on the gap between what Arthur thinks is happening and what is happening, and the gap has rarely been wider. Every shadow is an assassin, every customer a creditor, and the only man who is actually dangerous is the one Arthur keeps walking past. A sober Arthur, it turns out, is worse for everyone.

But it is also rather affectionate. The paranoia is played for laughs, yet underneath it is a man genuinely terrified of losing his grip, and the show never forgets that.