Looking for Mr Goodtime

A cheap Daimler is dangled at a fund-raising function, and that is all the bait anyone in this series has ever needed. The dealer is Goodtime Motors, and finding the place turns out to be considerably harder than buying from it. Arthur's search takes him through Soho at an hour and with a boot load of cargo that look bad from every angle. The police pull him over, find a gross of red light bulbs in the boot, and before he can get a word in, Arthur is under arrest for kerb crawling, soliciting a prostitute and assaulting a police officer.

D.S. Morley, who knows Arthur's character well enough to be sure he is not this kind of criminal, would let the matter drop. But D.S. Tomkins is not so charitable and presses on with the case. Arthur, refusing to trust anyone in a wig, insists on defending himself, which is exactly the sort of decision that makes a courtroom scene in this series worth watching.

His only real hope is Ray, who spends the run-up to the trial tracking down Goodtime Motors and wondering why Arthur keeps turning up at disreputable addresses in Soho. Ray finds the garage, persuades the owner to come to court as a defence witness, and the prosecution, seeing the case fall apart in front of them, withdraws every charge.

David Yallop and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Gordon Flemyng directed. George Cole is Arthur, Gary Webster is Ray and Glynn Edwards is Dave, with Nicholas Day as Morley, Jonty Stephens as Field, Jim Carter as Tomkins, Colin Jeavons as Lockwood, Peter Bayliss as Ashley, Ian Keith as D.C. Reed and Ronnie Letham as Mel Taylor.

It is a story about how the wrong car at the wrong price can turn a respectable dealer into a menace to society. The red light bulbs are the detail that makes the whole farce hold together, and Ray's long march through Soho is the episode's best joke.