The Long Good Thursday

Luigi, a café owner with ambitions, is opening a Mafia-themed restaurant called Cosa Noshtra, with Arthur's money behind it. The theme is about to become inconveniently real. The night before the grand opening, an escaped convict called Cranky Frankie Connor finds Arthur in the lockup and holds him at gunpoint, demanding to know whether his wife Rosie is having an affair with Luigi.

Frankie, as the nickname suggests, is not the most stable hostage-taker, and his jealousy has a counterpart in Luigi's own wife Carla, who has suspicions of her own. Arthur, doing his best impression of a marriage counsellor at gunpoint, persuades Frankie to put the question to Rosie face to face at the Winchester club. It is the wrong call. Rosie takes one look at the situation and phones the police, and the night ends with Arthur arrested for sheltering an escaped prisoner. Nobody pauses to wonder why a man on the run chooses the night of a restaurant opening to settle his marriage, which is the kind of logic the show has always trusted. The investment in Cosa Noshtra is probably not recoverable.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote it, with Lawrence Gordon Clark directing. Matthew Scurfield is enjoyably unhinged as Frankie, Chris Sanders and Mary Maddox are the suspicious Luigis, and Jean Warren plays Rosie. George Cole, Gary Webster and Glynn Edwards do the regular work, with Neil McCaul, Barnaby Kay and Matthew Delamere in support.

The title borrows from Raymond Chandler and swaps the farewell for a weekday. It is the last episode of the series, and it goes out on a very Minder note: a grand opening ruined, a hostage situation resolved by a phone call, and Arthur, who financed the whole disaster, the only one arrested. Some things never change, and the show is content with that.