SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those watching series one of Partners in Crime. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen episode three.
For the episode two recap, click here.
It’s raining again on the Beresford’s mock-Tudor paradise and on the roofs of their beehives too. Poor Tuppence sits forlorn on the stairs, hoping Tommy isn’t quite awfully dead when Uncle Julius arrives with breakfast.
Meanwhile, the hapless Tommy is looking decidedly un-suave as the scary hoods order him to steal a file from the Third Floor, on pain of his son George’s death. There’s proper acting from Walliams this week, as a man believably in fear for his child’s life. He is warming up very nicely, but I am still waiting for Jessica Raine’s performance to catch fire.
Tommy’s peculiar jealousy of Uncle Julius continues when Tommy comes home to find him wearing his cardigan and holding his pipe. I think it’s because Tuppence is so young, but I could never credit her taking a shine to a man of pensionable age, however dapper he is.
She reassures Tommy that she missed him terribly and touches his face, and it’s almost like she means it.
Just as things start to get very dark indeed, with talk of George’s peril and Rita’s murder, Albert arrives to puncture the gloom with his what-ho attitude and amusing hair.
This episode is laden with subtext, as Tommy attempts to carry out the gang’s instructions without inflaming Tuppence’s suspicions. There’s a funny bit of business in the village phone box when Tommy receives a call from the baddies just as a bossy-boots woman is waiting to use it for a harvest fair call of some importance.
James pops by for a debrief and Tuppence tells him about ANASSA. He brushes it off, which must mean it’s important. Tommy uses his debrief at the ministry to attempt to steal the Linden Tree file. He is grilled in a smoky spotlit room about his connections to Russia. They suspect his story about escaping the gang “with his fists” and warn him that working for Brown would effectively make him a traitor.
The mysterious “sand castle” is Tommy’s passport to credibility and gets him off the hook. He excuses himself to go to the lavatory, and that’s when he hopes to steal the Linden Tree file. Thankfully, Tuppence is smarter than him and intercepts his clumsy efforts before the other spies spot him wrestling with the lock of the handily labelled archive room.
She steals the file when she hears her son’s life is at stake. The old fire alarm ruse empties the building out while she finds what she’s looking for. They are shocked to find that the Linden Tree file is about Carter, possibly putting him in terrible danger. But they resolve that it’s worth it if it prevents harm coming to George.
Poor Annette has clearly been punished for cooperating with Tommy and tells him to take care of himself while Tuppence and Albert affix a tracking device to the underside of Whittington’s car.
Rather than dashing to George’s school to check he is still able to play cricket, T & T follow the tracking signal until they realise their brakes aren’t working and their Morris Traveller (as an aside, I want their car) goes careering into a field.
“I am just a man, a very ordinary man,” says Tommy, begging Tuppence to give up the chase and leave their secret double life behind. Finally, some sense. They won’t, of course, but it rings absolutely true that they would back out at this point, being as they are, a normal couple from a small village.
“Wait, where are you going?” says Tuppence. “To see the Queen, of course,” replies Tommy, now practically made of bunting. They finally get Jane’s message that she hid the recording with the queen bee.
A desperate Julius tries to steal the recording from them and the Beresfords give chase on their bicycles. Julius calls a person unknown from the village phone box and is ordered to destroy the tape.
After Julius’s shock confession, Carter is convinced Julius is actually Brown, but the Beresfords are sceptical and refuse to be put off the scent. As if they’re going to “leave it to the professionals”. Particularly when one of said trusted professionals is Peel, who seems to be working for the other side, and is in fact the real Brown. And he’s just been put on close protection duty with the target of his proposed assassination. Nice switcheroo.
After a nice bit of comedy business with Uncle Carter’s car, the intrepid two are once again in hot pursuit of Brown, determined to thwart his assassination bid, which he’s presumably going to carry out with an insulin injection.
The whole thing finishes with a classic rooftop chase, a villainous monologue and a fatal leap: the only fitting end for one who no longer loved his country. Bunting at half-mast.
Most importantly, the Beresfords resolve to continue in the service of their county. Hurrah and buns for everyone. This is exactly what my Sunday nights need.
CASE NOTES
- Love that the threat to George isn’t death, but the end of his cricket career.
- When they go to make the drop at night, the baddies’ torch flashes into Tommy’s face and makes that plunk noise that torches don’t when you switch them on.
- The worst thing to happen to the Beresfords was of course, the ransacking of their perfect home. The plates on that Welsh dresser were in total disarray.
- They discover that ANASSA means ‘queen’. Could our own Queen (not yet crowned) be the next intended target?
- This age-gap love thing is getting out of hand now that the Beresfords have surmised that Julius is actually Jane’s lover, not her uncle.
- A nice touch that the secretary of state, suffering insulin poisoning, can only be revived with the Beresfords’ honey.
