All Quiet on the West End Front

Arthur at a Business Expo is a sight to behold. He rents a booth, launches the Willesden Entertainment Consultancy, and offers busy executives the things money cannot buy without Arthur: West End theatre trips and casino nights, with tickets to booked-out shows as the speciality. He has a stack of cards, a borrowed table and a plan that has not been fully thought through, which is the most Arthur plan possible. The first attempt is a disaster. The second goes well enough to produce satisfied customers, which is where the trouble starts.

The satisfaction is noticed. Vanessa, glamorous and hard to read, steers some of an established company's clients Arthur's way, and the company, via a vicious casino owner called Kenton, objects with violence. Kenton is after Ray, who is meanwhile failing to romance the Expo manageress while his current girlfriend, a jazz singer, watches the attempt with growing jealousy. Between Kenton and the girlfriend, Ray earns his keep in this one. But the real entertainment is Arthur, discovering that corporate entertainment suits him down to the ground. Arthur, for once, is in his natural habitat, and the expo has no idea what it is in for.

Bernard Dempsey, Kevin McNally and Leon Griffiths wrote it, and Diarmuid Lawrence directed. Natascha McElhone makes Vanessa as opaque as the part needs, Ian McNeice is Hargreaves, Derrick Branche plays the excitable Kenton, and Samantha Womack is Marian. Marc Zuber, Jake Wood and Tim Stern keep the expo crowded.

The title is a joke about quiet, and nothing in the episode is quiet. Arthur ends the week as a going concern in corporate entertainment, which in his case means the same talents and new business cards. The West End may never recover, but the consultancy, at least, looks set to outlive the expo. The last laugh, as ever, will be Arthur's, at somebody else's expense.