The Great Depression of 1994

Depression is a subject the show treats more carefully than its usual stock-in-trade, at least until the toilet. Ray's Uncle Brian, who runs the family florists, has gone quiet and dark and will not talk to anyone. Arthur, self-appointed diagnostician, takes the case to Percy Vallins, a successful businessman who has lived with manic depression for years. Percy's verdict is blunt: Brian is shamming, using the gloom to keep Ray's interfering mother out of the flower shop. And Percy, as it turns out, has Brian's number.

That plot closes up neatly, but Arthur has also sold a car to Henry Keys, an ex-detective who was dismissed for corruption and has been fighting depression since. Henry comes back to the Winchester club, on the spot where the house he was born in once stood, and locks himself in the toilet. No amount of knocking or reasoning shifts him, and in the end it takes Detective Sergeant Rogerson to sort the situation out. Arthur's customer service, once again, extends far beyond the sale. The Winchester has survived plenty of schemes over the years, but a man barricaded in the lavatory is a new one.

Arthur Ellis and Leon Griffiths wrote it, with Gordon Flemyng directing. Robert Stephens gives Percy a lovely weary authority, Barry Jackson is Brian, Peter Jones plays Henry, and George Cole, Gary Webster and Glynn Edwards do the regular business. Amelda Brown, James Warrior, Duncan Bell and Merelina Kendall support.

There is real tenderness in the handling of Brian and real comedy in the handling of Henry, and the two do not quite fit together. That is fine. The episode is honest about the difference between the man performing an illness and the man living with one, which is more than most sitcoms manage. Arthur, naturally, treats both men with the same prescription: money, or failing that, a scheme.