A Taste of Money

The promised windfall turns out to be a more complicated thing once the Daleys land in Sydney. Bill McCabe meets them off the plane and books them into a hotel that flatters the occasion, and the lawyers then explain the arithmetic: there are five other claimants to great-uncle Joshua Daley's estate, and a sixth, a professional criminal called Rod whom the shady Reid has groomed to put Arthur out of the running. It is the kind of welcome that turns out to be part of the service.

The family pile is Paradise Springs, a largely derelict homestead on thousands of acres of outback land, potentially valuable for grazing and maybe for minerals. Arthur walks the place like the squire he intends to be. Reid's dirty tricks are thwarted by McCabe and the lawyer Susan Hamilton, but the news that comes out of the search is flat: the legitimate heir is somebody else. And then the Daleys learn their flight tickets were one-way. Sydney, it turns out, is where they are staying. The land is beautiful and useless to him, which is a metaphor the episode is too polite to spell out.

William Ivory and Leon Griffiths wrote this one, with Roger Bamford directing. George Cole and Gary Webster are Arthur and Ray, Simon Chilvers returns as McCabe, Nikki Coghill plays Susan Hamilton, Alex Morcos is Rod and Bill Hunter takes over as Reid. Arthur Dignam, Kerry Blakeman, Boris Brkic and Robert Alexander's concierge fill out the rest.

A taste of money, the title promises. Arthur gets the taste and none of the money, which for him is very nearly the same outcome, and the last image is of the Daleys stranded, broke, in a hotel they can no longer afford. The disappointment is the whole point, and it is a pleasure to watch it land.