Bring Me the Head of Arthur Daley

Charlie Knowles is doing life for armed robbery, and he has a list. His former partners all got lighter sentences, and Arthur is on it too, because of the car: the getaway vehicle Arthur sold him broke down, which is how the police caught up. Being wanted by a man like Knowles is bad enough; being wanted by him over a car is pure Arthur. Knowles wants people to pay, and his outside man Phelan is happy to arrange it.

Phelan's arrangements are thorough. He sets the former partners up for extra jail time, and he frames Arthur on dangerous driving, which earns Arthur a hundred hours of community service. The framing is tidy enough to convince a court, which is the annoying part. Rogerson is not fooled, and he and Ray start pulling at the threads. What comes out is that Phelan, who originally cooperated with the police, was double-crossing Knowles all along. Phelan gets arrested in the end. Knowles dies in prison, and his list of scores goes unsettled.

Bernard Dempsey, Kevin McNally and Leon Griffiths wrote it, with John Stroud directing. Stratford Johns gives Knowles the weight the part needs, Kenneth Cope is suitably slippery as Phelan, Phyllida Law is the magistrate, and James Warrior returns as Rogerson. George Cole, Gary Webster and Glynn Edwards hold the centre, with Jack Watson, Alan Ford and David Battley around them.

Arthur's hundred hours of community service is the running joke, and the joke is on everyone else, because the one man in the story who deserves punishment gets the lightest touch. Justice, in the show's world, is mostly about who you know, and Arthur knows everybody. His community service, one suspects, will be the most negotiated hundred hours of the year. Arthur takes his punishment the way he takes everything: as an opportunity to complain and negotiate.