Cockney-cop turned private detective finds himself investigating the moneyed elite of Chelsea. That could have been a predictable culture-clash comedy, with Nicholas Ball as a Michael Caine understudy, but Thames Television surpassed themselves with this episode - a subtle interweaving of snobbery and reverse-snobbery, baffling and amusing in equal parts to outsider Hazell.
A trust-fund daughter is about to celebrate her 18th birthday, and her parents have received an anonymous letter warning them to check-out her fiancé Jonathan. At the detective agency, Hazell is sent off to meet the mother, a well-kept beauty whose discreet randiness drives the plot in an unexpected way. Jonathan appears to be a straightforward Hooray Henry, disdainful of Hazells's lack of savoir-faire at the party - for example, the only one wearing a dinner-jacket (too bourgeois for Cheyne Walk), and having to be shown how to use a pepper-mill. As Hazell has been told to pretend he's interested in joining Jonathan's property scheme, however, the two of them have to make small-talk, and find they've got things in common, as Hazell reminds him: "In your world, you do it with a writ. In mine, we do it with a boot." We can't reveal more, but you'll hardly be surprised when Jonathan turns out to be not all he seems.
All the cast are able to carry conviction, except for the girl's father, who is too much of a boardroom stuffed-shirt, and the agency receptionist who speaks her one-liner "Vulgarity is making a comeback" without any sincerity or spontaneity. As always with Hazell, it's the dialogue that swings it - not a word wasted, not a cliché to be heard, many of the scenes ending on a terse little phrase, witty and wicked, that you could miss if you weren't listening out.
Real shame that Nicholas Ball should have delivered his ultimatum to the producers after just two seasons, demanding that future episodes must be made on film, not video, and then found the door shut in his face.
A trust-fund daughter is about to celebrate her 18th birthday, and her parents have received an anonymous letter warning them to check-out her fiancé Jonathan. At the detective agency, Hazell is sent off to meet the mother, a well-kept beauty whose discreet randiness drives the plot in an unexpected way. Jonathan appears to be a straightforward Hooray Henry, disdainful of Hazells's lack of savoir-faire at the party - for example, the only one wearing a dinner-jacket (too bourgeois for Cheyne Walk), and having to be shown how to use a pepper-mill. As Hazell has been told to pretend he's interested in joining Jonathan's property scheme, however, the two of them have to make small-talk, and find they've got things in common, as Hazell reminds him: "In your world, you do it with a writ. In mine, we do it with a boot." We can't reveal more, but you'll hardly be surprised when Jonathan turns out to be not all he seems.
All the cast are able to carry conviction, except for the girl's father, who is too much of a boardroom stuffed-shirt, and the agency receptionist who speaks her one-liner "Vulgarity is making a comeback" without any sincerity or spontaneity. As always with Hazell, it's the dialogue that swings it - not a word wasted, not a cliché to be heard, many of the scenes ending on a terse little phrase, witty and wicked, that you could miss if you weren't listening out.
Real shame that Nicholas Ball should have delivered his ultimatum to the producers after just two seasons, demanding that future episodes must be made on film, not video, and then found the door shut in his face.