User Reviews

I've been watching the entire Lovejoy series on Acorn for the last week; I haven't seen any of them since they were on cable almost two decades ago -- and they're even better than I remember them. I'm surprised that there are no comments on any of the individual episodes.

This is one of my favorites: One of the funniest ones so far, and also one of the best since the first season (which I'd never seen, and is my favorite season.)

Lovejoy and Eric encounter (without meeting) a delightfully dotty retired dentist and his wife, and must visit a scrap yard for a part for the old truck. While there, they acquire an old cast iron cannon, with resulting complications. An "expert" on old armament, who is a former arms dealer becomes involved, as do the local constabulary; Van Dyke's "last" palette, and an eastern European specialist from the Tower of London are also involved, with resulting misunderstandings, slapstick and several reversals.

Its a fine episode.

Remember screwball comedies? Those terrible movies in the 30s and 40s where they had actors running around acting like spazzes in so-called comedies? Where in lieu of funny dialogue they had the actors flailing their arms and shouting their very unfunny lines?

That's what this episode of Lovejoy reminded me of.

There's nothing charming or funny or lighthearted here. We get a scrabbling couple of prunes who accidentally back into Lovejoy's pickup truck. He goes to a scrapyard for a replacement taillight and gets talked into buying a one-tonne cannon from the Napoleonic Wars or something. Naturally it sags his truck bed. He makes it to a local pub, but when they get out of the cab, the truck tips and the cannon slides through the pub's walls and down into the beer storage. Chaos ensues.

It's all such a grind. It had me wishing the big cannon would fall on Catchpole, k1lling him, and writing Eric Jury out of the series. That character seriously gets on my nerves in at least half the episodes. He just seems to serve as someone who gets yelled at by Lovejoy and Tinker.

I half-expected the Keystone Cops to show up and the film to be shown as 2x speed.