It's Only a Beautiful Picture...

Some criminals sell secrets. Some sell paintings. Colonel Sangster's gang sells both, shipping art treasures and industrial secrets out of the country and on to foreign powers, using the blind routine of Customs as their cover. It is a scheme built on paperwork, which makes it one of the more unusual villainies the show ever tackled, and a reminder that the biggest losses rarely involve guns.

The method belongs to Tibbs, Sangster's pilot. He gets the crates of illegal cargo out of the country by misdeclaring them on the forms, and when he is called back to rectify the mistake, he substitutes an innocent consignment that sails through the checks. It is a lovely piece of criminal bookkeeping, the sort of fraud that never fires a shot, until the trap closes, because this is The Professionals. To break the scheme, Doyle goes undercover inside the gang, and CI5 start building a snare of their own around the operation.

Brian Clemens and Edmund Ward wrote it, Dennis C. Lewiston directed. Moray Watson is Sangster, Jonathan Newth is Tibbs, Prunella Gee is Sarah Gresham, Neil McCarthy is Sam Armitage, Anthony May is Snapper Ullmann, Antony Carrick is Ralston and Dennis Burgess is Galbraith.

The pleasure here is in the mechanics. The show usually blew things up; this time the enemy is a filing system, and watching CI5 unpick it is its own quiet satisfaction. Doyle undercover in the art world is a long way from his usual beat, and the change of scenery does him good. The title is the whole philosophy of the villains: it is only a beautiful picture, until someone remembers what it is worth. CI5 learn the same lesson the hard way.

It is a change of pace done right, and the art theft angle gives the final act a bit of class.