The Cruel Canal

It starts as a delivery and goes wrong before the first mile. Ray's van dies in Limehouse with two hundred video recorders in the back, and the recorders, it turns out, are stolen. That alone would be trouble enough. But then word gets around that Big Dai, a man with a short fuse and a long memory, wants his property back, and suddenly the priority is getting the consignment somewhere else entirely.

Arthur's answer is transport of a kind nobody sane would choose: a barge. The ancient Persephone, which looks older than the canal system it travels, is pressed into service, and off they go, Arthur, Ray, the video recorders and a steadily rising level of dampness. The journey promises complications and delivers them by the crate. By the time it is over, the recorders are less a consignment and more a museum of water damage, and everyone aboard has had a very long day.

Kevin McNally, Bernard Dempsey and Leon Griffiths wrote it, with Keith Washington directing. George Cole is Arthur, Gary Webster is Ray and Glynn Edwards is Dave, joined by Anthony O'Donnell as Big Dai, Emma Cunningham as Gloria, Neil Phillips as Two-Tone, Cathy Murphy as Vicky, Trevor Cooper as Derek, Michael Goldie as Freddie and Metin Marlow as the Canal Policeman.

It is the kind of plan that only makes sense if you have spent your life getting out of trouble by moving the evidence. Arthur commits to the canal idea with real enthusiasm, and the show gets a lot of comedy out of watching him regret it by degrees. The recorders don't survive the trip, and neither does anyone's good humour. Big Dai's reaction is left to the imagination, which is probably for the best. It is not the sort of day anybody will look back on fondly, except possibly Arthur, who never lets a loss go to waste.