Lovejoy “Friends, Romans and Enemies” #1.4 (1986) (TV)

“You’ll never make the upper classes, Lovejoy; you’re too much of a snob.” 16 October 2019

To get Gimbert off his back, Lovejoy agrees to sort through some junk left over after an estate sale.  The dead man was something of an eccentric and, as Lovejoy discovers, a man who may have known the whereabouts of a treasure in Roman gold coins.  Lovejoy’s suspicions seem to be proven correct when a couple of long-lost American “relatives” turn up to collect their uncle’s possessions. Can Lovejoy solve the dead man’s riddles and find the treasure first?

As I’ve stated over and over, I love Lovejoy.  But, Friends, Romans and Enemies is not among my favorite episodes.  It’s still good - all Lovejoy episodes are worth watching - but it doesn’t work as well on me as most of the others.  I think my main problem is that there is too much plot for the 50+ minute runtime. The story here could have easily been stretched out into a two-parter.  When you squeeze it all down into one episode, a lot of the details get lost. How do all the dead man’s clues fit together? How did Lovejoy know to go to the Isle of Man?  How did Jane and Eric (and the baddies for that matter) know where to find Lovejoy? Every time I watch this episode, I’m left with a lot of questions. It’s not that I need plot points spoonfed to me, but I miss the leisurely pace of most Lovejoy episodes where discovering the details is part of the fun.  

Another issue I had with Friends, Romans and Enemies was some of the acting, particularly on the part of Catherine Strauss as Nicole - one of the American “relatives”.  She’s not horrible, but she’s not up the level of acting you find in the rest of the cast.  

6/10