Oblomov

Ho has viral pneumonia and Dr Li prescribes ten days horizontal, until a visit from the informer Jack Bross gets him out of bed. The second episode of the second series is built on a simple inversion: the detective cannot move, so the case has to come to him.

The title is the joke and the plan at once. Oblomov is Goncharov's novel about a man who cannot bring himself to leave his bed, and the episode puts its lead in the same position with the same problem, except that his informant will not let him stay there. Alan Ford returns as Jack Arthur Bross, the released prisoner of the very first episode, now established as the relationship that actually makes Ho's work function. That relationship is the series' least visible machinery and this is the one episode that makes it the subject.

Around the sickroom, the cast gives the station its hierarchy. Paul Antrim plays Chief Inspector Seddon and Michael Barrington Chief Superintendent Nuttall, both of whom return later in the series; Ron Emslie plays Detective Sergeant George Whatley, who also appears in Tapdancer. John Savident plays Don Lidell and Robert Russell Eric Leggatt, with Albert Moses back as Mr Patel after carrying the same character name in 1981, and Merdelle Jordine as Myra.

IMDb adds five names Wikipedia omits, and two of them recur: Eddie Tagoe as Prince Majesty, Troy Foster as Eli and Dana Michie as Hatman appear here, and Eli and Hatman return in Pasts seven weeks later. Lucienne Camille and Ray Marioni complete the five.

Terence Williams directed this episode as well as producing it, the only time in the run that both credits sit with one person. He was the series producer for all fourteen episodes, and directing one of them gives the run its single experiment with a house style under its own producer's hand.

The episode matters to the series' characterisation because it shows how dependent Ho is. He works from information rather than from legwork, and an hour that immobilises him makes the point that his informants are his real equipment. For a detective of the period's maverick type, that is an unusual thing to build an episode around, and it is more interesting than the premise's comedy suggests.

IMDb's dataset records 6.7 from 6 votes for this episode, the lowest figure of the fourteen, which is worth recording and not worth interpreting: six votes cannot establish why a run's weakest number sits where it does.

The outcome is not documented in any source, and the run's second series has no episode overview anywhere, so this hour is described from its premise and its cast. What the record supports is a 1982 BBC episode in which the hero cannot get out of bed, the plot arrives at his door, and the man bringing it is a criminal who became an informer in the series' very first week.