One Wink Plot
Lovejoy walks out of an open prison after eight months inside for handling a stolen Georges Jacob dressing table, a conviction he maintains belongs to somebody else entirely. Clearing his name means unpicking the sting that put him there — a Dutch woman who vanished, a table that found its way home via police custody, and an Old Master hidden somewhere it had no business being. Also a cricket pavilion, a chimney, and a very great deal of Suffolk.
Review
"Woolworth's used to sell these for thruppence. That's about what they're worth now."
It is August 2026 and most of England is in the worst drought since... well, a long time ago. I for one am sick of the heat, and so seeing Lovejoy emerge from an open prison into an overcast afternoon and an awaiting Janey — in her green Range Rover — makes me long for autumn and an end to this hot horror.
Lovejoy is back after a five-year episode drought, and McShane emerges into the nineties with more mullet and a little extra body timber. I exited the nineties in similar fashion.
McShane had starred in Texan soap opera behemoth Dallas in between and — this is some trivia — had married Sue Ellen Ewing as the English screenwriter Don Lockwood. So, a busy man. And the arrangement evidently suited them, because Linda Gray follows him back across the Atlantic at the end of this series, turning up as Cassandra Lynch in the feature-length finale The Black Virgin of Vladimir — which repeats often chop in half, sending the first part out under the title Riding in Rollers.
Where we left Series One with Fulton Mackay and the Porridge link (Clement, La Frenais), we reappear with a great set-up: Lovejoy in prison and with a score to settle. Luckily this episode stays almost entirely in Suffolk. There is a brief flirtation with Antwerp, but then I imagine the controller at the BBC radioed them to call McShane back after the Death in Venice debacle, and reminded the writers where their strength lay.
This episode is a corker. It opens with Lovejoy holding court to a group of Women's Institute members in a hall that resembles one found in any market town. In this cut-price Antiques Roadshow setting we get an antique condom joke, and to my mind, after five years away, that is quite a ballsy opening if you will.
The crew are back. Mainly. We seem to have lost Gimbert, but Jane, Eric, Tinker and Lovejoy are all back and looking great. We also get introduced to a new character — Miriam the Morris Minor, a gift from Lady Jane — who will stay with us until the last episode. Shame about the Volvo estate, but this is the nineties and that is progress, I suppose.
Onto the plot. A Dutch woman with excellent manners and an antiques shop that turns out not to exist pays Lovejoy £500 to run a Georges Jacob dressing table over to a dealer on the Continent, where it sells for £57,000 and she promptly stops existing as well. The table then contrives to get itself burgled back to its original owner, which is exactly the sort of thing furniture does when there is a stolen Van Dyck folded up inside it.
Eric appears in a Lazer crash helmet (still with motorcycle and sidecar). I know of these as they were the cheapest crash helmets you could get in the early nineties, and I had one to accompany the Yamaha DT50 that was my pride and joy when I turned 16. Fifty ccs of pure trail bike power. Nought to thirty in about a minute. Sixth form let me ride it in. At 17 I moved up to an RD125 — liquid cooled, no less. That got stolen, but I had fallen off it about ten times by then so probably for the best. The Lazer crash helmet survived.
Anyway. Michael. It was obvious from the wonderful Series One episode The Judas Pair that this friend of the Felshams was a wrong 'un, so when he turns up here — a nice bit of continuity and a great call-back to the highlight of Series One — it is no real surprise that the whole set-up of Lovejoy over the dressing table was led by this bloke.
The flashbacks to the sting that got Lovejoy incarcerated are well executed: a brief interlude, fading in and out of black and white. I wish the live cricket on Sky would do the same. I have lost count of the number of times I have celebrated a wicket in the pub only to realise they are showing a previously taken one. Sky, take note — do your replays in black and white so we can differentiate between them and the live action.
Talking of cricket, we do get a little cricket in this episode, and a truly strange scene where Lovejoy's fellow ex-con Mavis (a bloke) is tied up in a cricket changing room, about to be tortured by one of Michael's accomplices. Mavis is saved by Lovejoy, who throws cricket balls at the torturer and then drinks cans of Fosters with him — which in my book feels like an unnecessary continuation of the torture.
The episode keeps up a nice pace as Lovejoy zones in on his hapless quarry. The first visit to Michael's gaff, where it is Lovejoy professing his innocence, is well handled, and the not-so-subtle interloping of some cockney chimney sweeps leads us to the comedy moment where Lovejoy breaks into the house Santa Claus style to prove who set him up.
The final denouement of Michael is a little anti-climactic, but shows up Lovejoy as the bigger man.
So the drought is over, and this episode is a welcome shower of Lovejoy... joy, to get us going again. Lovejoy has his cottage back, the gang are back, and I am back. Let's go.
Favourite Moment
Lovejoy rescuing Mavis from the cricket pavilion by bowling at his torturer, then settling down with him afterwards over warm cans of Fosters. A rescue and a second, subtler cruelty in the same scene.
Good Quote
Lovejoy, signing off from the Women's Institute:
"I have enjoyed these quiet afternoons. Surrounded by nice people talking about their hydrangeas and swapping chutney recipes. Makes a welcome change from the conniving, backstabbing, avaricious alcoholics that populate the antique trade."
Guest Focus — Anthony Valentine
Anthony Valentine returns as Michael Seymour — the same character, five years and one series on. In The Judas Pair he stood in a barn and deliberately fired wide rather than shoot Lovejoy, and turned out not to be the villain. Here he is the villain, and the eight months Lovejoy has just served are his doing. The payoff to a set-up nobody knew was a set-up in February 1986.
Also worth a mention: Christine Kavanagh as Renata Van Der Zee and Maxine Audley as Marigold Paynter.
The Divvy Verdict
A great return, and good to see Michael get his comeuppance at last — even if Lovejoy lets him off rather more lightly than I would have.