Leslie Darbon

4th March 1970 (IMDb) or 17th March 1970 (epguides.com)

2^nd May in Liverpool, England, where the Beatles came from.

The docks of Liverpool are bathed in night time darkness. A group of suspicious looking men are breaking into a warehouse. It is Liverpool after all. These men are pros – they’ve even brought their own saw.

The warehouse is packed with the latest electronic equipment. Which of the transistorised kit are they after? But wait – they seem to be smashing through the wall to the next warehouse. How strange.

They find what they’re looking for.

Fish soup.

Fish soup? Why would a bunch of toughs break into a Liverpudlian warehouse to steal soup? Summon the boffins – this is well beyond the powers of PC Plod.

144 tins of soup were stolen that night. Jason comments that there is no accounting for taste. For once I’m inclined to agree with him.

A call comes in – the tins have been round on a rubbish dump. They are all accounted for and all unopened. Bang goes the idea that there was something inside the tins.

Things are shaken up by Jason’s investigations in Lisbon and a second group of heavies are put on the tail of the group of heavies who stole the stuff in the first place. This is getting dangerously multi-layered.

After a thirty second montage which included just about every audio and visual stereotype of Chinese hustle and bustle, we get a close up of Jason. Someone is trying to kill him and its only five and three quarter minutes into the episode.

Hilariously he’s just reading from his new manuscript. I suspect the pretty redhead is his agent or his publisher or some other profession in which a woman can wear those glasses and not look silly.

He asks the waiter what he’s just been eating and is told Portuguese fish soup. Jason is appalled – he didn’t order that. No – he didn’t – it was a gift from a fellow diner.

Sir Curtis gives him the low-down and Jason leaps to an erroneous conclusion. And I don't mean that Sir Curtis's head is the same size as a soup tin. That's just a trick of the light. Probably.

There are lots of familiar names or faces in this episode. No Anthony Hopkinses (if that is the plural of Hopkins) but a good few "Oh yeah" bods. For example,

Peter Arne - the chap who was cast in Frontios but was killed before recording.

Patrick Mower - now in Emmerdale but best known for "Special Branch", "Target" and "Carry On England". Or the Burtons for men TV adverts.

Ann Holloway was the younger daughter in "Father, Dear Father" and dashed pretty in her day. She turned up years later in "Earthshock".

Ronald Lacey did everything from "Porridge" to "Magnum PI" to an uncredited role as Himmler in "Indiana Jones".

Good – she’s kept the long hair for the final episode. Go out on a high – that’s what I always say.

I like the headscarf she wears too.

Though she isn’t just eye candy this week – she’s tracked down a hovel and in it is a discarded soup crate. Gadzooks.

I’m not sure about this outfit – it appears that the change in decade happened very suddenly to Annabelle Hurst.

The two young ladies who run the junk shop are quite clearly an item. As if the knowing looks between them weren’t enough, we later see that they live together above the shop. They are, quite literally, two girls who hang their hats on the same hat stand.

I mean, do they look like two girls going off to separate bedrooms? I don’t want to labour the point but do they? Hmm?

And for the ladies and gay gentlemen here is Jason being alluring.

The soup company secretary is pretty edible. She has wonderfully dextrous fingers.

When Jason hears that it wasn’t something in the tins as he had theorised he suddenly becomes interested in the case. Stewart reminds him that he’s promised to finish his manuscript for his publisher. "I know how to get round Melissa" he assures Stewart. He then hops on a plane to Lisbon because that’s where the answers will be.

He phones up the company which supplied the soup and claims to be opening a restaurant and that he would like to import some soup. He gives his real name. His worldwide fame seems to ebb and flow depending on the needs of the script.

Jason agrees with me about the soup secretary and invites her out to dinner. He’s less than thrilled when – being foreign – she naturally wants to bring her mother with her.

The Portuguese soup magnate orders one of his employees killed. Jason goes to the rescue and, in the half-light and wearing a cravat, biffs the hell out of a couple of Portuguese heavies.

The Portuguese soup magnate tells Jason that he’s heard of Mark Caine. But he’s not a fan – he finds them to be in extraordinarily poor taste. Jason is appalled and tells him he thinks the same about his soup.

Stewart decides that if the tins of soup are not the answer, then maybe the transistor radios stolen as a decoy might have some significance.

He might be onto something – the leader of the gang is extremely annoyed that five of the radios are missing and he blames Jeremy. Bloody Jeremy. Never trust a Jeremy. Except Paxman.

Having made the deduction that it was the radios that the thieves were really after, Stewart follows up this piece of reasoning by concentrating on finding the crate the soup tins came in.

Just when you think Stewart is being a moron, it turns out that the crate that was stolen was the first of a new style of crate and therefore might have some significance. It isn’t exactly exciting stuff this – significance or no significance it is still just two people talking about a soup crate.

He’s now decided that the radios are the key to the mystery. He’s so engrossed in studying said tranny (back in the days when that word was safe to Google but Google hadn’t been invented so it was a moot point) that he doesn’t bother holding on to the steering wheel.

For the sake of business, even a pretty young girl’s girl can be persuaded to flirt with an American gentleman who comes a-callin’.

He goes round to Jeremy’s boutique and the whole gang round him up and take him to the back office. So we now know that our hardened criminals run a groovy clothing boutique. Nice.

"Now I’m going to give you all the answers. Not that it’ll do you much good I’m afraid. Quite the reverse in fact" says the leader of the boutique boys. It is such a perfectly cod-adventure line that I felt the urge to quote it in full. I may put it in bold or perhaps a larger typeface.

The man Jason saved explains the whole deal. Ramos – the Portuguese soup magnate – was in trouble and needed to convert his wealth into precious stones. These he could ship to a safer part of the world in tins of soup. He was planning to send his fortune on a journey which would’ve involved a stop at Liverpool docks. There the boutique gang – organised by the man Jason saved – would switch cases and Ramos would never know where his money went. However, Ramos wanted a more secure design of crate and changed his firm’s crates at very short notice. The boutique boys had to break in and steal one of the new design if they wanted to make the switch. The whole transaction is due to take place any time now.

And here it is – the boutique boys have brought Stewart with them (as you would) and are unaware that Ramos’s English hoodlums are waiting for them outside.

With resources stretched, it is down to Sir Curtis and Annabelle (dressed as a canary-based superhero) to burst in and make the crucial "The game’s up" declaration.

Stewart opens a soup can and – inside a polystyrene case – he finds a bag of diamonds. Annabelle – bless her – is the only person in England surprised by this.

The men sent by Ramos to take care of the boutique boys are arrested and even Ramos himself has his collar felt courtesy of some men Jason met earlier in the evening.

The episode – and indeed the series – ends with Jason inviting the cute secretary to come and work for him at his villa. He needs a hand finishing his latest novel and she fits the bill perfectly.

I’ve not watched this one for about fifteen years because I remembered it being dreadful. It is actually rather good – the initial mystery seems pathetic and unworthy of three such talents but once it is established that there was nothing in unusual in the tins, then it becomes rather more intriguing. The radios are a bit of a red herring – not a bad thing in a mystery as it does help them solve the case and the boutique boys are right to worry about them – but it does mean we meet Ann Holloway and have several suggestive scenes. The overall plot hangs together remarkably well. Indeed, it is one of the more complicated and logical plots of the series. An unexpected highspot which always seemed like it was dumped at the end of the run because it is so weak.