Lovejoy

Ian McShane (Deadwood) is an antiques dealer and part-time detective in his hit British drama series based on the novels by Jonathan Gash. The roguish Lovejoy (we never learn his first name) has an eye for a find and a forgery, a fondness for the ladies, and a weakness for a good sob story. Broadcast on BBC1 in the 1980s and ‘90s; seen on A&E in the US. Includes all 5 season and both Christmas specials. “One of television’s most charming and appealing characters”—Washington Post. 73 episodes, 63½ hrs, 22 DVDs, SDH.

Season 1, Episode 1: The Firefly Cage

A firefly cage, beautifully carved from coal, leads Lovejoy to a gang of antique thieves and their cache of loot.

 

Season 1, Episode 2: The Axeman Cometh

Lovejoy connives to win a Welsh oak dresser at an auction well below his value, but a stuck door reveals more than he bargained for.

 

Season 1, Episode 3: 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.

 

Season 1, Episode 4: Friends, Romans and Enemies

While receiving articles from an estate sale of an eccentric engineer, Lovejoy uncovers clues that lead him to an ancient Roman grave.

 

Season 1, Episode 5: 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.

 

Season 1, Episode 6: 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.

 

Season 1, Episode 7: The Real Thing

Jane partners with an entrepreneur names Palmer to convert a warehouse into an Art Nouveau antiques center, but Lovejoy suspects he’s a con man.

 

Season 1, Episode 8: The March of Time

After acquiring an old clock in a trade with another dealer, Lovejoy finds some priceless love letters from the Napoleonic Era.

 

Season 1, Episode 9: Death and Venice: Part 1

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.

 

Season 1, Episode 10: Death and Venice: Part 2

Lovejoy finds it is not the beautiful Caterina he has been seeing in Venice but her greedy sister Lavinia, who is not saving art for posterity, but herself.

 

 

Season 2, Episode 1: Just Desserts

After Lovejoy is released from a low security prison, he is determined to find out who framed him for theft.

 

Season 2, Episode 2: 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.

 

Season 2, Episode 3: Bin Diving

Eric becomes involved in a  territorial dispute with garbage man Brian Nunn over his right to salvage valuables from the garbage.

 

Season 2, Episode 4: Montezuma’s Revenge

After Lovejoy is recruited to sell an ancient Colombian funerary figure with a curse on it, it soon lives up to its reputation.

 

Season 2, Episode 5: Who Dares, Sings

 

Season 2, Episode 6: 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.

 

Season 2, Episode 7: National Wealth

 

Season 2, Episode 8: Sugar and Spice

 

Season 2, Episode 9: Raise the Hispanic

 

Season 2, Episode 10: Lily’s Pearls

 

Season 2, Episode 11: Riding in Rollers (1 of 2)

After Lovejoy meets Harry Catopodis at a party thrown by a rich American widow, he discovers that the Emperor Hirohito tea bowl he is selling is a fake.

 

Season 2, Episode 12: 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.

 

 

Season 3, Episode 1: Friends in High Places

When Lovejoy returns from a prolonged South American hiatus, he reunites with Jane, Eric, and Tink.

 

Season 3, Episode 2: Out to Lunch

 

Season 3, Episode 3: No Strings

 

Season 3, Episode 4: Angel Trousers

 

Season 3, Episode 5: Benin Bronze

 

Season 3, Episode 6: Eric of Arabia

 

Season 3, Episode 7: Scotch on the Rocks

 

Season 3, Episode 8: Loveknots

 

Season 3, Episode 9: Smoke Your Nose

 

Season 3, Episode 10: 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.

 

Season 3, Episode 11: Members Only

Lovejoy and Jane help a likeable and honorable Japanese businessman become a member of an elite golfing country club.

 

Season 3, Episode 12: Highland Fling: Part 1

Lovejoy journeys to Scotland with Jane to help her friend who needs him to help her raise money to maintain her expensive estate.

 

Season 3, Episode 13: Highland Fling: Part 2

Lovejoy helps the Brooksbys save their estate by discovering the secrets of the 18th Century Greek Revival pigsty in the woods near the manor.

 

Season 3, Episode 14: The Prague Sun

Lovejoy’s search for diamonds stolen from a priceless religious object takes him to Prague where dark forces are waiting.

 

 

Season 4, Episode 1: The Napoleonic Commode

When Lovejoy is mistaken by the local bailiff for his landlord, he is evicted from his house and has his car antiques inventory confiscated.

 

Season 4, Episode 2: The Ring

 

Season 4, Episode 3: Second Fiddle

 

Season 4, Episode 4: The Colour of Mary

 

Season 4, Episode 5: Fly the Flag

 

Season 4, Episode 6: The Judgement of Solomon

 

Season 4, Episode 7: The Galloping Major

 

Season 4, Episode 8: God Helps Those

 

Season 4, Episode 9: They Call Me Midas

 

Season 4, Episode 10: Irish Stew

 

Season 4, Episode 11: Dainty Dish

 

Season 4, Episode 12: Taking the Pledge

 

Season 4, Episode 13: Lovejoy Loses It

 

 

Season 5, Episode 1: Pig in a Poke

A very successful pork farmer is expecting a royal visit and is desperate to rid himself of a hot property, an item stolen from the palace.

 

Season 5, Episode 2: Who Is the Fairest of Them All?

Lovejoy is asked to sell a sinister looking mirror from a ballet school and discovers that Lade Jane has some shocking news.

 

Season 5, Episode 3: A Going Concern

Lovejoy uses the vacated Felsham house to sell antiques, both real and genuine.

 

Season 5, Episode 4: The Kakiemon Tiger

Lovejoy’s IOU to a former client is inherited by a notoriously lethal loan shark.

 

Season 5, Episode 5: Three Men and a Brittle Lady

Lovejoy helps Charlotte find the thieves who’ve robbed her house and helps Charlie recover the china figurine stolen from him at an auction.

 

Season 5, Episode 6: Ducking and Diving

While Tink and Eric are vacationing at Jack’s, a Metro DCI specializing in antiques is determined to pin a robbery on Lovejoy.

 

Season 5, Episode 7: 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.

 

Season 5, Episode 8: Poetic Licence

When Lovejoy tries to help save an institution for the mentally disturbed by selling their antiques, someone tries to kill him.

 

Season 5, Episode 9: Peking Gun

Two competing Tong bosses vie for a Ming Dynasty war cannon which Lovejoy is selling for a lady friend of Charlie’s.

 

Season 5, Episode 10: Goose Bumps

Lovejoy agrees to investigate the alleged drowning death of a man who reportedly fell or jumped from a ferry.

 

Season 5, Episode 11: Swings and Roundabouts

An aging traveling carnival manager needs money and wants Lovejoy to sell his antique candlesticks.

 

Season 5, Episode 12: Never Judge a Book by its Cover

Two aging spinsters ask Lovejoy to sell their family Bible, as rare historic editions that worth a lot of money.

 

Season 5, Episode 13: The Price of Fish

Lovejoy accompanies Charlotte to her friend’s Victorian manor house for a school reunion with resulting complications.

 

Season 5, Episode 14: 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.

 

 

Season 6, Episode 1: 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.

 

Season 6, Episode 2: 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.

 

Season 6, Episode 3: Somewhere: Over the Rainbow?

Tink seems depressed and after Lovejoy bails him out for an incorrect appraisal, he inexplicably disappears without a word.

 

Season 6, Episode 4: Double Edged Sword

A shady businessman’s priceless 18th Century samurai sword has been stolen and he enlists Lovejoy to locate it within 3 days.

 

Season 6, Episode 5: Guns and Roses

After a skilled gunsmith refuses to sell his shop in the red light district, the local vice lord frames him, along with Lovejoy, for robbery.

 

Season 6, Episode 6: 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.

 

Season 6, Episode 7: Breaking the Broker

Frustrated by his failure to get evidence on a Polish smuggler, Pulver frames Tinker in order to coerce Lovejoy into helping him run a sting.

 

Season 6, Episode 8: Fruit of the Desert

 

Season 6, Episode 9: Holding the Baby

 

Season 6, Episode 10: 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.

 

“The Prague Sun” Christmas Special (1992)

“The Lost Colony” Christmas Special (1993)

 

“Sophisticated, charming, witty comedy/drama” – DVD Talk

“Antiques is a lovely but murderous business, filled with love, fear, greed, death, loathing and ecstasy.” - Lovejoy