User Reviews

Entirely set in a hotel, various storylines are interweaved. There is some scene setting to begin with, and it is not until some way into the episode that Budgie appears, and the reason for the hotel setting becomes apparent; he wishes to offload a projector onto Charlie Endell, who, as in every episode, is ahead of Budgie's thinking. Realising that he is not going to get anywhere with the projector sale, Budgie has more success in using it for a film show, escaping with the proceeds before the attendees realise that they have been duped. In the humour of Budgie's comic escapades, a fateful scenario unfolds concerning a father seeking the whereabouts of his daughter who had been staying in that hotel. The father is initially befriended by, and receives reassurance from, a salesman (superb performance by the eloquent Preston Lockwood); the father is subsequently treated in an off-hand manner (when the salesman's deal appears to have fallen through); and the father overhears that a young lady had been found dead in one of the rooms.

Budgie, with Hazel in tow, arranges to meet Charlie Endell at the Grandee Hotel, a gaudy Spanish style joint where the manager's ambitions for the place do not match the passion for he has for his marriage craving receptionist, with whom he is having an affair.

Budgie has arranged to meet Charlie at the hotel to try and offload a stolen film projector onto him ( silly boy ) however Charlie, knowing it has fallen off of the back of a lorry, wants to have nothing to do with it. So now what must he do?

Meanwhile, a Mr. Oliphant is staying at the hotel who is looking to find his estranged teenage daughter, who is reported to be staying at the hotel, whilst salesman Mr. Grindlay is having trouble trying to find a buyer for his consignment of mincemeat.

'Grandee Hotel' is a fine piece of work. It has it all. Humour, tension, pathos. Iain Cutherbertson really comes into his own here. He is arrogrant, controlling and a bully yet for some bizarre reason likeable. The late June Lewis makes her debut as his mute wife Mrs. Endell ( mute only because Charlie doesn't give her the chance to get a word in ).

Quite an interesting supporting cast here too. As hotelier Jeff Staines we have Anthony Valentine and Sylvia Kay of 'Just Good Friends' as his lovely receptionist Eileen. Peter Sallis ( Clegg from 'Last Of The Summer Wine' ) plays the mousy Mr. Oliphant while Preston Lockwood appears as the mincemeat pushing Grindlay. 'Love Thy Neighbour' star Jack Smethurst has a small role as a drunken customer who Budgie cons into believing there is a blue movie exhibition going on at the hotel.

The episode ends on a sad note as Oliphant discovers from the hotel receptionist that his daughter's lifeless body has been found in one of the rooms, having taken her own life via an overdose.