Partners in Crime episode six recap – a spectacular end-of-the-pier show

SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those watching series one of Partners in Crime. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen episode six.

For the episode five recap, click here.

And so the Beresfords bow out, for this series at least, with a spectacular end-of-the-pier show featuring the death-plunge of their evil nemesis, a ticking bomb and a big Hollywood snog to finish.

At the start of this final episode we rejoin a fretful Tuppence, staring out to sea, pining for the missing Tommy. If he really is done for, there’s no mystery. It was the suspiciously German Mr Denim (Mr Pseudonym more like) with the blunt object in the smuggler’s tunnel.

After the titles, it becomes clear that Denim has dumped an unconscious Tommy further up the shoreline and scarpered to move his smuggled goods. And although I’m sure Denim gets a good work out lugging those crates of contraband hooch, it’s quite the stretch that he’d have hurled all 6ft 3in of Tommy Beresford over one shoulder and made off along the shale with him.

Still, a woozy and concussed Tommy is discovered by Commander Haydock (who has been fairly quiet until now) and is helped back to the old naval man’s lodgings for a restorative glass of milk. You don’t cast Roy Marsden in an unassuming bird-watcher cameo and waste all that potential malevolence. Don’t drink the milk, Tommy! Of course it’s too late and we soon discover that Haydock is an unspecified spook in the pay of N and that he has the missing Gilbert Worthing captive in his anteroom.

Albert and Tuppence regroup with Uncle C and review the evidence. Despite her worry, Tuppence’s detective cogs whirr into action and she twigs the connection between Denim and Sheila. She’s soon in hot pursuit of the pair while trying to throw the officious Polish maid off the scent. While Tuppence recklessly cowers in Sheila’s footwell, head-to-toe in designer day wear, Tommy stirs from his slumbers to find Roy interrogating the kidnapped scientist. Roy lets slip that N is, in fact, a woman. But WHICH woman?

Tommy and Tuppence’s escape from Haydock’s house is beautifully shambolic, from her ridiculously breathless diversion/home invasion to his clumsy lock-picking and bickering with the ungrateful prof, to Tuppence’s now trademark boshing of the commander on his unsuspecting bonce. Generally-speaking, I love how British politeness is so often used as a weapon against the enemies of our country.

N is finally revealed as Mrs Sprot, just as Tuppence suspected, but she’s frightfully restrained and doesn’t go on about it. N tells the Beresfords they have four hours to meet her demands or she’ll detonate the bomb. Tommy and Tuppence embrace with relief and it’s the moment I really feel like they’re a three-dimensional couple. At last! There’d better be a second series now.

The Roger Blake MacGuffin provides Tommy with a chance to risk all for his country and so he agrees to pose as the notorious N’s lost love. Uncle Carter agrees to meet N on the pier at 9 o’clock; one hopes he means at night, because this scam won’t work in daylight.

That final kiss after she’s applied his fake moustache is their tenderest moment of the series. But there’s not much time for sentiment as they head off to the pier to bate the trap.

The scene on the pier is predictably chaotic, with even the usually cool Carter not particularly in control of things. The gang of three advance down the pier towards a desperate N, a woman with the key to a nuclear device who now has nothing left to live for. Only the Beresfords would follow her.

Tuppence’s devastating display of unarmed combat proves too much for our Russian spy, who dies the way she lived, theatrically and in a lovely outfit. Meanwhile, a bomb ticks towards detonation under the stage with the innocent people of Norwich still quite unaware of the threat to their windows. “We’ve been in tighter spots than this,” reassures Tommy as Albert panics over which wire to cut.

With three seconds left on the clock, Tommy risks the blue wire and defuses the threat to humankind (well East Anglian-kind) and snogs the face off his grateful wife, still coming down off the murder she’s just done. Heady stuff.

As the curtain comes down on series one, we’re in no doubt that a second series is intended as T & T make plans for their new detective agency. He’s thinking along sensible lines, but Tuppence, thrumming with adrenalin, is thinking bigger. “We’ll be chasing jewel thieves, uncovering government conspiracies … I’ll need a new hat,” she gasps. Bring it on, I say.

Case notes

• Roy Marsden’s (Hadfield) evil laugh when Tommy realises his predicament is right up there with Vincent Price for sheer malice.
  
• I know I go on about it, but the Beresfords’ inter-personal thermostat finally went up a notch tonight and not before time. That nuclear snog at the end actually melted the buttons on Albert’s cardie.
  
• Tuppence is inappropriately dressed at the best of times, but I thought the red and leopard-print ensemble quite perfect for tunnel-creeping and baddy-bashing.
  
• Tuppence’s kick-arse stylings in that final scrap with Mrs Sprot were something else. Who knew she could disarm a gun-wielding maniac with a single roundhouse to the wrist?
  
• Tommy’s persuasive skills were impressive during his captivity with Hadfield. Despite their often clumsy snooping, these two have the raw talent needed to turn them into real spies.
  
• I’m decided, a second series is necessary. My Sunday nights need this sort of well-dressed derring-do.