I am writing this while watching Anne of the Thousand Days, with Richard Burton doing his considerable best as Henry VIII. There is no link whatsoever to Lovejoy, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
But the title got me thinking, as titles do when you are only half watching. Anne Boleyn was queen for roughly one thousand and eighty-three days. In that time England got a new church, a new queen, and the future Elizabeth I.
The gap between the end of Lovejoy Series One and the start of Series Two was one thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine days.
Henry VIII got through the entirety of Anne Boleyn — courtship, coronation, a daughter who would go on to run the country for forty-five years, and an executioner brought over specially from Calais — then married Jane Seymour and produced a male heir, all in less time than it took the BBC to commission a second series of a programme about a Suffolk antiques dealer. Say what you like about the Tudors. They got on with it.
Anyway. Series One.
It is great. I think it might be my favourite, though I accept that is the sort of thing a man says having watched ten episodes with sixty-odd still to go, and I reserve the right to be talked out of it somewhere around Series Three.
What strikes me most, going back through them, is how finished it all is. Most shows spend a first series feeling around in the dark for what they are. Lovejoy arrives fully formed. The fourth wall is broken within minutes and never really put back. The tone — that particular mix of the roguish and the wistful, a caper that keeps stopping to admire a piece of furniture — is there from the off. Nobody had to find it. It simply turned up.
And McShane looks cool as. There is no other way to put it. The leather jacket, the hair, the way he can make a line about Georgian silver sound like an accusation. He is a long way into a career at this point and gives the impression of a man who has finally found the part he was built for.
The crew are a delight too. Tinker perpetually one drink away from a good idea, Eric hopeless in a way that never quite tips into irritating, Lady Jane far too clever for everybody including herself, and Gimbert the sort of villain you would happily have a pint with. They work because they are not really a team. They are a set of people who keep ending up in the same room.
The other thing worth saying is that watching these back has been a proper pleasure, and knowing I had to write each one up made it more of one rather than less. You notice differently when you know you will have to account for it later. Episodes I had seen three or four times over the years turned out to be full of things I had never once registered — a joke in the background, a bit of set dressing, an actor doing something small and perfect in the corner of a scene. Homework, but the good kind.
So here is the ten, worst to best. Reasonable people may disagree. Reasonable people are welcome to.
The Series One Top Ten
10. Death in Venice, Part One — 2.5 / 5
The show leaves Suffolk and immediately misplaces itself. Handsome to look at, and that is about the height of it.
9. Death in Venice, Part Two — 2.5 / 5
Marginally ahead of Part One on the grounds that Fulton Mackay turns up and the thing eventually comes home. Lovejoy has to explain the plot twice, which tells you most of what you need to know.
8. To Sleep No More — 3 / 5
Not bad so much as thin. Passes the time pleasantly and leaves very little behind.
7. The Axeman Cometh — 4 / 5
Genuinely entertaining television that never quite feels like Lovejoy — the only episode where I scored the Lovejoy Units below the episode itself. Rescued almost single-handedly by Catesby, his axe and his extraordinary accent.
6. The Real Thing — 4 / 5
Busy, witty and a return to form. Marked down only because it tries to be two very good episodes at once and does not quite have room for either.
5. The March of Time — 4.5 / 5
The one where the antique actually matters. Remove the clock and there is no story, which is precisely how this show ought to work.
4. The Firefly Cage — 5 / 5
The plot makes very little sense and I do not care in the slightest. Establishes everything in fifty minutes and ends with a flaming mop. If home is where the heart is, this is home.
3. Friends, Romans and Enemies — 5 / 5
A five with no asterisk attached. Roman treasure, a proper guest turn from Freda Dowie, and Lovejoy at his most incorrigible.
2. The Sting — 5 / 5
The first time the whole crew pulls a job together, and the moment the show works out what it is. If you have never seen an episode of Lovejoy in your life, start here and let the rest follow.
1. The Judas Pair — 5 / 5
The original novel, the original story, and the best fifty minutes of the series. A duel, a mystery, Anthony Valentine being magnificently untrustworthy, and an ending that earns itself. Perfection.
And so to Series Two
Burton is still going as I finish this. Henry has just worked out that he can change the rules if he does not care for them, which is more or less Lovejoy's entire business model, only with better tailoring and considerably worse consequences.
One series down, five to go — and roughly seventeen hundred days of waiting compressed into a click of the remote. The Tudors would be appalled at how easy we have it.