A Bird in the Hand Is Worth Two in Shepherd’s Bush

Billy, Arthur's Yorkshire contact, has a problem with a pigeon. Young Sam is due to race from London to Bradford with ten thousand pounds of prize money on the line, and Billy wants the bird guarded. Ray gets the job, which should be simple. Then Arthur, being Arthur, lets the bird escape, and the two of them have to find a substitute on a station platform. The original, naturally, turns back up. Pigeon plots work that way. Ray goes north with the bird and Billy, which is how a ten-thousand-pound pigeon race turns into a family matter.

The real trouble is human. In Bradford, Ray falls for Donna, daughter of Stan Sorrell, the bookmaker on the other side of the bet, and starts talking seriously about moving north. Arthur, who cannot stand losing a minder to romance, arranges for Donna to be squired around a nightclub by a man called Nostalgic. It is the most Arthur solution imaginable, and it goes about as well as most Arthur solutions do.

George Costigan is Billy, Gabrielle Cowburn is Donna, Willie Ross is Stan Sorrell, Nick Reding is Nostalgic and Stephen Churchett is the hotel waiter. Glynn Edwards, Sidney Livingstone and Lill Roughley fill out the supporting ranks. David Yallop and Leon Griffiths wrote the script; Roger Bamford directed.

It is a gentle episode, more about Ray's heart than anyone's wallet, and the pigeon is the best actor in it. Arthur, as ever, would rather wreck his minder's happiness than risk losing him, and he goes about it with the same efficiency he brings to everything else. It is a small story told well, and it does not need a fist fight to prove itself.

And there is something oddly moving about Ray, who has spent his whole working life keeping Arthur out of trouble, wanting a life of his own. The show lets him have the thought, even if it does not let him keep the girl.