Fatal Impression

I've often wondered if this story was meant to be the final episode of Minder - maybe the pack was shuffled and the bosses decided to slot it halfway through the final season instead. Whenever I watch the series chronologically, I always keep this as the last one - if you watch the last few minutes, you'll see why!

It's an odd episode, whereby the central premise (a silly story of a dodgy man who owes Arthur and others a lot of money, but then 'disappears') seems to take a back seat to the two more serious subplots involving Terry.

An old girlfriend is desperate for his help after leaving her abusive husband, and rocks up at Terry's flat with her two young children in tow. Ever the Good Samaritan, Terry lets her stay, and kips on the sofa while he tries to help her sort her life out. At the same time, he also feels enough is enough of his own life of scrimping a living with the artful Arthur, and maybe he should sort himself out too and get a proper job.

As with many of the later episodes, this one suffers from the rather forced and unnecessary 'comedy' of the central premise - as always, revolving around Arthur. Minder was always best when it was gritty, and the laughs came more naturally out of the situations that arose. The show also seems to want to become more like Only Fools & Horses towards the end - which is a shame, as both shows were brilliant and had similarities, but were also quite different too. It seemed to be a mistake I think to later put the focus more on Arthur than Terry, when the balance worked far better the other way around as it was originally.

So all in all, not exactly a great episode, but one that does work very well as a close to 10 highly-enjoyable years of a much-loved series.

This episode sums up a lot about this excellent series. Without police involvement the magic isn't there. Also Billy Connolly shows once more he can not hack it as an actor in any setting. A Colombo episode from years ago another example I must add.

Another lazy episode that has a clear feel of an earlier storyline , a trait of series 7 throughout. Terry allows a battered wife and her children stay at his flat however this feels very much like the episode from series 2 'Not a bad lad Dad '. Even some of the scenes are similar , Terry kicking a football around the park , moody ex husband , Arthur's disapproval etc.

The side story involving Arthur and a dodgy eccentric gambler who has disappeared also feels like a past storyline rehashed . The writers had clearly run out of ideas for this series and Terry gaining a job would have been a good end episode for Dennis Waterman to close on so strange this wasn't the final one as suggested by another poster. Maybe they should have ended 'Minder' for good and dropped the title and given Arthur Daley a spin off show instead.