Trojan Bus

The boys from Down Under are back. Colin MacGruder and Ray Stackpole, last seen in "Golden Fleece" and still working to their own theme tune, return to London with a plan that is either very clever or very silly: steal a bus, pose as the crew, and rob an art dealer travelling on it of a Goya painting. And the painting is already promised to a buyer in Amsterdam. A Goya on a London bus. You have to admire the nerve.

Regan gets his way in through the dealer's female assistant, who is in on the scheme. Lean on her hard enough and the whole thing starts to come apart, which it does in the best possible style: a river chase and a shoot-out, and that's the end of the line for the boys from Down Under. Regan is not a man who enjoys being made a fool of by a pair of bus conductors. The Sweeney always had a talent for taking an outlandish premise and grounding it in mud and bad weather. The river chase alone is worth the ticket, all spray and shouting and boats going where boats shouldn't.

Roger Marshall and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Ted Childs directed. Patrick Mower and George Layton are back as the cheeky Australians, and they're as watchable as ever. Lynda Bellingham plays Nancy King, the dealer's assistant with reasons of her own for helping the villains, and Robert Dorning is Leonard Geisler, the robbed dealer. Nancy is the sort of accomplice who thinks she can talk her way out of anything, and Bellingham plays that nicely. Frederick Jaeger, Leslie Dwyer and Carol MacReady complete the line-up alongside John Thaw, Dennis Waterman and Garfield Morgan.

It's a lighter, more playful caper than much of the season, and the show wears that well. It starts with a bus and ends with a boat chase. What's not to enjoy.