Lovejoy
Lovejoy is an irresistible rogue with a keen eye for antiques. The part-time detective scours the murky salerooms, auction halls and stately homes of Britain, always on the lookout for a find.
Cast:Ian McShane , Dudley Sutton , Chris Jury , Phyllis Logan , Malcolm Tierney , Caroline Langrishe , Diane Parish , Pavel Douglas , Maggie Ollerenshaw , Geoffrey Bateman , David Arlen , Denys Graham , Eric Deacon , Jo Ross , John Scholes , Jan Wilson , Joanna Lumley , Gwen Humble
S1.E1 ∙ The Firefly Cage
A firefly cage, beautifully carved from coal leads Lovejoy to a gang of antique thieves and their cache of loot.
S1.E2 ∙ The Axeman Cometh
Lovejoy connives to win a Welsh oak dresser at an auction well below his value, but when Eric discovers a stuck door, they find more than they bargained for.
S1.E3 ∙ The Sting
A reformed drug addict asks Lovejoy in helping her recover valuable statuettes from her late father's estate that she had used to support her habit.
S1.E4 ∙ Friends, Romans and Enemies
While reviewing articles from an estate sale of an eccentric engineer, Lovejoy uncovers clues that lead him to an ancient Roman grave.
S1.E5 ∙ The Judas Pair
A collector of flintlock pistols is murdered for a valuable but incomplete set of dueling pistols and Lovejoy has the missing pieces.
S1.E6 ∙ To Sleep No More
After a skilled antiques forger dies and a thief steals a forged snuff box, his only legacy to his widow, Lovejoy vows to retrieve it.
S1.E7 ∙ The Real Thing
Jane partners with an entrepreneur named Palmer to convert a warehouse into an Art Nouveau antiques centre, but Lovejoy suspects he's a con man.
S1.E8 ∙ The March of Time
After acquiring an old clock in in a trade with another dealer, Lovejoy finds some priceless love letters from the Napoleonic era.
S1.E9 ∙ Death and Venice: Part One
A sickly and paraplegic American multimillionaire is obsessed with saving the art treasures of a slowly sinking Venice and hires Lovejoy to help in his enterprise.
S1.E10 ∙ Death and Venice: Part Two
Lovejoy finds it has not the beautiful Caterina he has been seeing in Venice but her greedy sister Lavinia, who is not in saving art for posterity, but herself.
S2.E1 ∙ Just Desserts
After Lovejoy is released from a low security prison after an eight month sentence for theft, he is determined to find out who framed him.
S2.E2 ∙ The Italian Venus
Lovejoy utilizes all his wiles for a sting which will help the disinherited brother of a snobbish aristocrat recover some of his rightful fortune.
S2.E3 ∙ Bin Diving
Eric becomes involved in a territorial dispute with with garbageman Brian Nunn over his right to salvage valuables from the garbage.
S2.E4 ∙ Montezuma's Revenge
After Lovejoy is recruited to sell an ancient Colombian funerary figure with a curse on it, and it soon lives up to its reputation as murders soon follow.
S2.E5 ∙ Who Dares, Sings
When Lovejoy agrees to fit out Tinker's old army friend Linden Walker's new pub, he buys a houseload of furniture from former prison officer George Palmer. Unfortunately it turns out to be stolen and to make things worse the victims turn up at the pub's opening night and recognise it, causing Lovejoy to go on the run to clear his name. He also discovers that Tinker lied to him about being an officer in the army when he was in fact a corporal.
S2.E6 ∙ One Born Every Minute
Lovejoy is intrigued by a painter using the name Ashley Wilkes, squandering his talent on kitschy paintings of cottages and seducing the lady of the house.
S2.E7 ∙ National Wealth
Lovejoy agrees to help Madeline Gilbert, a once famous film star fallen on hard times, to sell her valuables, but she is burgled by an armed French gang who have crossed the Channel after killing a gendarme. Lovejoy has an alibi - auctioneer Melanie Ford - but he wonders if she has been coerced into tipping off the villains. Before the gang is caught, Tinker puts himself in danger by boarding a boat belonging to Lovejoy's chief suspect, a respected army major.
S2.E8 ∙ Sugar & Spice
Having bought a collection of erotic prints by Fuseli from teen-aged Khadija, Lovejoy joins his ex-wife Susan for the speech day at their daughter's school, where Lovejoy recognises Khadija as a pupil. She has stolen the pictures from the school as an act of revenge on headmistress Miss Hemmingway for her treatment of her older sister when she was a pupil, but is being duped by a blackmailer out to gain money from discrediting Khadija's family, to whom she has passed on the collection. Lovejoy sets out to retrieve it in the knowledge that success means that Miss Hemmingway will waive the large amount of school fees he owes her.
S2.E9 ∙ Raise the Hispanic
Having agreed to furnish Ralph Peagram's daughter Amanda's new house after her marriage to philandering Roger Hall, Lovejoy attends the wedding and overhears Ralph and Roger argue. Soon after the reception, Roger disappears and Lovejoy discovers his corpse in a suit of armour, though when the police arrive it is nowhere to be found. At Amanda's request, Lovejoy sets out to solve the mystery, which has its roots in an incident of accidental death and blackmail dating back a quarter of a century.
S2.E10 ∙ Lily's Pearls
When brash upstart financier Joe Gruber offers to buy land from Lady Jane's husband to create a wildlife sanctuary, both Jane and Lovejoy are suspicious of his motives and discover that he has not been exactly honest over his motives. At the same time Lovejoy finds himself in the middle when both Gruber and his dizzy wife Lily admit to having, independently of each other, pawned her pearls when they were short of cash, and both engage him to get them back.
S2.E11 ∙ Riding in Rollers (1 of 2)
After Lovejoy meets Harry Catopodis at a party thrown by a rich American widow, he discovers that the Emporer Hirohito teabowl he is selling is a fake.
S2.E12 ∙ The Black Virgin of Vladimir (2 of 2)
Lovejoy colludes with rich American widow and a Japanese businessman to con the Greek antiques dealer who conned them.
S3.E1 ∙ Friends in High Places
When Lovejoy returns from a prolonged hiatus in Spain courtesy of his sting of conman Harry Catopolous and reunites with Jane, Eric, and Tink.
S3.E2 ∙ Out to Lunch
After spending the weekend with Victoria, Lovejoy takes her to an antiques fair and cannot believe his luck when he picks up a set of paintings by famous artist Lionel Beckwith for a mere twelve pounds. He sells them to a local gallery but is interrupted by Beckwith himself, claiming they are forgeries. A little detective work on Lovejoy's part reveals Beckwith's reasons for wanting supposedly adverse publicity, as interest in his work is falling. Lady Jane saves the day for Eric after he is conned by a supposedly bereaved pensioner.
S3.E3 ∙ No Strings
An Irish rock group staying with Jane has their money stolen by the event organizer along with a priceless Celtic harp.
S3.E4 ∙ Angel Trousers
Lovejoy's entrusted with the medals of the brother of Jane's former housekeeper Vera, but they are stolen from his safe.
S3.E5 ∙ Benin Bronze
Wealthy Australian Greg Veitch arrives in East Anglia looking for his 'Eureka', the thing that he must have, and believes he has found it in a Beninese bronze sculpture belonging to Sir Max Spence. Problems obtaining an export licence leads to him doing a deal with Sir Max and a local forger to get the statue out of the country. When it goes missing Lovejoy comes under suspicion but discovers that police inspector Shand is not all he claims to be - just as Veitch will have a similar experience with the bronze, which will lead him to seek revenge.
S3.E6 ∙ Eric of Arabia
In hospital with a broken leg, Lovejoy delegates Lady Jane and Tinker to sell a terra cotta Chinese pig to a Chinese banker. It turns out to be a forgery and gets broken, revealing its contents, a valuable medieval Chinese bank note. But this might also be a forgery so Lovejoy makes use of micro-surgery to examine another pig, one of several in the possession of choleric dealer and possible swindler Sir Desmond Clark. Meanwhile Eric meets fellow biker, the lovely Natasha, with whose help he sells his motor-cycle as having been the property of Lawrence of Arabia.
S3.E7 ∙ Scotch on the Rocks
Vicky finds a Scots claymore in the attic of her new flat which Lovejoy buys from her. He is approached by a man named Kinloch who offers him a more than generous price for it, claiming a family connection, and, when a suspicious Lovejoy refuses, the sword becomes the subject of a bungled burglary. Lovejoy is intrigued and finds out that the sword provides the key to a cache of French gold buried in the ground. Ironically Tartan Transactions, a controversial firm in which Kinloch has an interest, has just built a supermarket over it and retrieval seems unlikely.
S3.E8 ∙ Loveknots
When Lady Jane puts a Berber rug into auction it is bought by elderly Harriet Fisher for her Irish wolfhound, but young Moroccan Abdel is also after it and steals it from her house. Lovejoy buys a second rug and again Abdel is keen to own it, claiming that the rugs were woven in his village by his girlfriend and contain the answer to his marriage proposal. Lovejoy is not convinced and learns that Abdel's prospective uncle Said has a more mercenary reason for wanting the rug. Having got it back for Harriet, Lovejoy comforts Lady Jane, who has split from her husband after refusing to go to Hong Kong with him for his job.
S3.E9 ∙ Smoke Your Nose
After Lovejoy offers to sell a seventeenth century 'Smoke Your Nose' dish for him, vicar Harry Nettles tells him that there is the remains of a Roman villa in the field next to his church, but the land is marked for development by shifty Derek Rudge as a leisure centre. Lovejoy wonders why nobody has bothered to take Harry's claims seriously and uncovers an arrangement between Rudge and county archaeologist Nancy Phelan, which results in the reverend's story being authenticated. Eric is less fortunate when he sells a grandfather clock to pernickety Mr. Rosenbaum, who is definitely not what he seems.
S3.E10 ∙ Kids
Lovejoy learns that his daughter is living with a middle-aged man and that a close friend has been duped into buying an expensive forged painting.
S3.E11 ∙ Members Only
Lovejoy and Jane help a likable and honorable Japanese businessman, Mr. Kashimoti, become a member of an elite golfing country club.
S3.E12 ∙ Highland Fling: Part One
Lovejoy journeys to Scotland with Jane to help her friend who needs him to help her raise money to maintain her expensive estate.
S3.E13 ∙ Highland Fling: Part Two
Lovejoy helps the Brooksbys save their estate by discovering the secrets of the 18th Century Greek Revival pigsty in the woods near the manor.
S3.E14 ∙ The Prague Sun
Lovejoy's search for diamonds stolen from a priceless religious object takes him and Eric to Prague where dark forces are plotting against them.
S4.E1 ∙ The Napoleonic Commode
When Lovejoy is mistaken by the local bailiff for his landlord, he is evicted from his house and has his car and antiques inventory confiscated.
S4.E2 ∙ The Ring
Strapped for cash, Lovejoy recruits old time con artists Matron Jackie Gideon and Henry the Hearse Chaser to attend an auction where he is selling a painting by local artist Jessie Webb, and purposely bid against each other to bump up the selling price. He is successful but incurs the wrath of Lady Jane, who was also - innocently - in the bidding and ultimately has to hand over his gains to a young antique dealer he has rooked.
S4.E3 ∙ Second Fiddle
Lovejoy is intrigued when famous violinist Lindsey Parry-Davies mysteriously asks him to make his valuable Stradivarius look like an imitation, but nonetheless calls on the services of Tommy Norris, Liverpool supporter and king of the violin fakers. Eventually, after an attempt to burgle his house, Lindsey admits to Lovejoy that his plan was to thwart his stepfather, a failed musician who collects instruments solely to display them, though the pair are reconciled.
S4.E4 ∙ The Colour of Mary
Charlie Gimbert, Lovejoy's former landlord, returns, with Murray McNally, a once famous snooker player, now a bad-tempered drunk, whose management Gimbert has 'inherited'. McNally is anxious to locate and buy the billiard table that once belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots and the trail leads to Fotheringay and Sir Anthony, descendant of the queen's last jailer. The table is - apparently - still there and Gimbert buys it, as a gimmick, to raise cash on McNally's exhibition tour. McNally himself has other plans for the table.
S4.E5 ∙ Fly the Flag
Facing huge death duties, Christian Shotley asks Lovejoy to sell his family's antiques, only for Lovejoy to find they are excellent forgeries made by Christian's father. However, when local ladies' man 'Beau' Whittaker discovers a flag dating from the battle of Lexington hidden in the family church, a profitable sale seems likely. However, American air force colonel Fellowes claims the flag as being stolen from his family two hundred years earlier. With the local vicar entering the fray, it is as well that the Shotleys own a priceless set of model soldiers whose sale could ease their worries.
S4.E6 ∙ Judgement of Solomon
Retired RAF officer Connaught asks Lovejoy to sell a collection of Jewish religious artefacts, allegedly purchased by his late wife and with no provenance. However, whilst Lovejoy asks father and son dealers the Solomons to price them, Connaught makes a quick sale to Gimbert and when the Solomons tell him the whole lot was looted by Nazis from Polish synagogues, Lovejoy understands why. When the collection is stolen, Eric catches the thieves but Mr Solomon recognises that dishonesty takes many forms and that Connaught is not all he seems to be.
S4.E7 ∙ The Galloping Major
Whilst visiting a scrapyard for a replacement indicator lamp for his truck, Lovejoy buys an old iron cannon, which gets him stopped by the police and almost destroys a pub's cellar. This attracts the attention of ordnance expert Major Turpin, who tries to steal the cannon whilst Lovejoy is at the Tower of London finding out its value. Fortunately for Lovejoy, the elderly couple who accidentally smashed the light arrive at his house to reimburse him and not only scare off the thief but also present him with something of real value.
S4.E8 ∙ God Helps Those
Lady Jane ropes Lovejoy into organizing a charity auction for the local hospital and visiting the geriatric ward, where he meets elderly Florence and stops her greedy son from stealing her antique condiment set. A series of ram raids, robbing antiques to order, spells trouble for Lovejoy when a Sheraton table he is minding for a friend is smashed. Mysterious Belgian Monsieur Forget involves Gimbert in a quest for a particular clock and becomes a suspect in the raids, as does Danny, a boy who saves Lady Jane from a mugging and undertakes odd jobs at her house. However, the identity of the real mastermind gives real meaning to the term 'cold as charity'.
S4.E9 ∙ They Call Me Midas
Jim Leonard, Lovejoy's old mentor, asks for his help in a plot to sting greedy Dutch art dealer Hans Koopman, who once cheated Jim's wife's Judy's late father. At a weekend house party where Tinker poses as a lord and Eric as a gentleman farmer, they persuade Koopman to buy a fake Klimt painting in exchange for a parcel of diamonds, but on Monday morning Lovejoy discovers that Koopman is not the only person whom the Leonards have deceived.
S4.E10 ∙ Irish Stew
In Ireland where Lady Jane hopes to buy a Jack Butler Yeats painting, Lovejoy and his associates interrupt a burglary at the home of disreputable dealer Bertie Montserrat, though Montserrat denies there was a crime. The thieves dropped a page from the legendary and supposedly lost Book of Clonmel, which leads Lovejoy to the monastery of Father Xavier, who rescued the book and to the cleric's sister Maeve Fitzgerald, an impoverished, once famous actress who has allowed herself to be manipulated by Montserrat to gain money to save her house.
S4.E11 ∙ Dainty Dish
In Brighton on a working holiday, Lovejoy meets Lady Jane's friend Louise, widow of a Belgian baron and resistance hero. She possesses a valuable porcelain plate, part of a larger dinner service stolen by the Nazis in the war. With the help of psychic Olwyn, Lovejoy is able to track down the remaining service but discovers that one of her predictions was grammatically incorrect. Lady Jane meanwhile confesses her feelings for Lovejoy to Louise.
S4.E12 ∙ Taking the Pledge
Lovejoy tries to help an old friend, now turned homeless man, to redeem a valuable heirloom watercolor miniature.
S4.E13 ∙ Lovejoy Loses It
Lovejoy temporarily turns his back on his own ethical standards... to his ultimate regret.
S5.E1 ∙ Pig in a Poke
Bill Brodie, one of the country's biggest pork farmers, is expecting a royal visit and is desperate to rid himself of a hot property, A Venetian bronze stolen from the Palace.
S5.E2 ∙ Who Is the Fairest of Them All?
Lovejoy is asked to sell a sinister-looking mirror from a ballet school and discovers that Lady Jane has some shocking news for him.
S5.E3 ∙ A Going Concern
Lovejoy uses the vacated Felsham house to sell antiques, both real and genuine, before the auction over the objections of the receivers.
S5.E4 ∙ The Kakiemon Tiger
Lovejoy's IOU to a former client is inherited by a notoriously lethal loan shark who gives him three days to pay... or else.
S5.E5 ∙ Three Men and a Brittle Lady
Lovejoy helps Charlotte find the thieves who've robbed her house and helps Charlie Gimbert recover the china figurine stolen from him at an auction.
S5.E6 ∙ Ducking and Diving
While Tink and Eric are vacationing at his uncle Jack's, a Metropolitan DCI specializing in antiques, is determined to pin a robbery on Lovejoy.
S5.E7 ∙ Stones of Destiny
Lovejoy accompanies Charlotte to Wales in search of a stolen Celtic cross that may have come from a coastal cave that served as a Medieval church.
S5.E8 ∙ Poetic Licence
When Lovejoy tries to help save an institution for the mentally disturbed by selling the institution's antiques, someone tries to kill him.
S5.E9 ∙ The Peking Gun
Two competing Tong bosses vie for a Ming Dynasty war cannon which Lovejoy is selling for a lady friend of Charlie's.
S5.E10 ∙ Goose Bumps
In order to settle a dentist bill Lovejoy agrees to investigate the alleged drowning death of a man who reportedly fell or jumped from a ferry.
S5.E11 ∙ Swings and Roundabouts
Boswell, the aging manager of a traveling carnival, needs money and wants Lovejoy to sell his antique candlesticks, but end up charged with stealing them.
S5.E12 ∙ Never Judge a Book by Its Cover
Two aging spinster sisters ask Lovejoy to sell their family Bible, a rare historic edition that's worth 20,000 pounds.
S5.E13 ∙ The Price of Fish
Lovejoy accompanies Charlotte to her friend's Victorian manor house for a school reunion with resulting complications as Gimbert gives him an eviction notice.
S5.E14 ∙ The Lost Colony
Lovejoy journeys to North Carolina on the trail of stolen Sir Walter Raleigh and his beautiful but larcenous "cousin," Mary-John Lovejoy.
S6.E1 ∙ Fair Exchange
After a night of heavy drinking Lovejoy wakes up to being charged with assaulting Charlotte and stealing a painting, but he has no memory of anything.
S6.E2 ∙ Day of Reckoning
A deranged murderer with a penchant for puzzles and a pathological hatred of Lovejoy tries to lure him into a trap by kidnapping and threatening to kill Charlotte.
S6.E3 ∙ Somewhere - Over the Rainbow?
Tink seems depressed and after Lovejoy bawls him out for a incorrect appraisal, he inexplicably disappears without a word.
S6.E4 ∙ Double Edged Sword
Shady businessman Frank Whymark's priceless 18th Century samurai sword has been stolen and he enlists Lovejoy to locate within 3 days or else.
S6.E5 ∙ Guns and Roses
After a skilled gunsmith refuses to sell his shop in what has become a red light district, the local vice lord frames him and Lovejoy for robbery.
S6.E6 ∙ The Last of the Uzkoks
Lovejoy is hired by half a dozen claimants to track down the provenance of an artophorian, a priceless vessel from a centuries old Greek Orthodox communion set.
S6.E7 ∙ Breaking the Broker
Frustrated by his failure to get evidence on a Polish smuggler, D.S. Pulver frames Tinker in order to coerce Lovejoy into helping him run a sting.
S6.E8 ∙ Fruit of the Desert
Lovejoy buys a collection of Islamic antiques from retired diplomat Harold Plumb, who warns him that by rights some of the collection should have gone to the Foreign Office. He obtains his purchasing money from loan shark John Hill, putting up his daughter's flat as collateral, only to find the police on his trail and a visit to the Foreign Office discloses the fact that Plumb is a con-man who stole the articles in question. Helped by Charlotte, Lovejoy stages an extremely elaborate charade to get the deeds for the flat back from Hill.
S6.E9 ∙ Holding the Baby
Lovejoy buys a tatty kitchen cabinet for a song, knowing that, after restoration, it is a valuable antique dresser but the owners con Beth into parting with it. After her mother hypnotizes her, Beth recalls who took it and the trail leads to shady dealer Oliver Jeffries. By coincidence, Charlotte, who is minding a friend's baby, is accidentally locked in Jeffries' shop overnight. Lovejoy regains his property but is not pleased to receive a visit from the tax man.
S6.E10 ∙ Last Tango in Lavenham
Tink's decision to leave antiques and open a pub causes Lovejoy to pop the question to Charlotte, but things become complicated with Jane's return from America.
