Lovejoy: Chicken Parisian Recipe đŸ„ đŸ„ đŸ„ đŸ„

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Years Released: 1986–1994 (with a 5 year gap between season 1 and 5)
Key Directors: Baz Taylor, John Crome, John Woods, Francis Megahy, Ian McShane
Starring: Ian McShane, Dudley Sutton, Chris Jury, Phyllis Logan
(TV MA, 71 episodes, each approx. 55 minutes each)
Genre: Comedy, Drama

“Maybe it’s better to have friends than lovers.”  (Lovejoy to Lady Jane, who is his all to0 married friend)

Think Antiques Roadshow, but supercharged with a good hearted rogue and a cast of characters that make Father Brown’s bunch seem pedestrian by comparison.

There’s Lovejoy (Ian McShane) himself –don’t ever call him Mr. Lovejoy, by the way – equally in love with antiques and beautiful women.  And he’s a “divvie,” meaning he can tell a fake from a forgery with just a glance.

But he and his friend Tinker (Dudley Sutton), are not antique mystics.  They can always back up their opinions with esoteric details about said object, since they read and study everything they can get their hands on.   

For instance, “in one episode, Lovejoy examines a painting that's said to be a Van Gogh. He points out subtle details, like the way the sun is painted, that reveal it's a modern forgery.”

Some of the best episodes are when Lovejoy scams the scammers.  He uncovers a double dose on them in “The Real Thing,” where he just feels that a guy opening an antique mall is not right, sort of that feeling you might get that puts the hackles up on your back, whether you know why or not.

In that same episode he cons a couple of cons, using their own greed against them.

But of course, Lovejoy is no innocent.  That is why he can smell a con artist himself.  He is not above lying when it suits his purpose, such as putting one over on his frenemy Gimbert (Malcolm Tierney), pretending to pick up a steel staircase when it is not his.

Part of what endears us to him is when Lovejoy breaks down that invisible  fourth wall that opens the stage to the audience as though the actors do not even see us. 

Lovejoy talks to the audience – maybe a little like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the Wolf of Wall Street, Fight Club, and several film noirs, such as The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon.

Usually he does this at the opening of an episode, where he tells us all the dirty little secrets in the antique trade and how each dealer tries to scam other dealers and the “punters” they want to buy their overpriced wares.

Though we know Lovejoy is part con man himself, when he actually gets put in prison for a while, it is an actual frameup and he ultimately finds the unlikely guy who framed him in “Just Desserts,” one the top episodes of the series.

We can’t omit his fellow cast members, either.  Tinker (Dudley Sutton), who calls Lovejoy the son he never had, while Lovejoy himself, at least 20 or 30 years his junior, poetically calls Tinker his son.

Then there is Eric (Chris Jury), the third wheel so to speak, a wayward ne’re do well whose father pays Lovejoy to apprentice him in the antiques trade.  Instead, Lovejoy uses Eric as a gofer, doing the more menial tasks Lovejoy prefers not to do.  Eric (Chris Jury) at first shows little interest in antiques and mostly listens to his heavy metal bands on his ubiquitous headphones.

 The interplay among the three tells all.

  • Eric Catchpole: [At the funeral] Was he really such a great forger?

  • Tinker Dill: [Taking exception] Copyist! They're only a forger when they're caught.

  • Tinker Dill: Have you read "Kelly on Restoring Oil Paintings"?

  • Eric Catchpole: [Sarcastically] I think I'll wait for the film.

  • Eric Catchpole: [In the car speaking to Lovejoy] We shouldn't be out in the country piddling around like this. We should be back home trying to make a dishonest living.

  • Lovejoy: [Talking to Tink as he is sitting at a bar] Can you hear me?

  • Tinker Dill: I not only can hear you, Lovejoy, I can see both of you.

Then there is Lady Jane Felsham played by Phyllis Logan, so unrecognizable as the all-too-married love of Lovejoy’s life, that it had to be pointed out by my friend Steve that she is noneother than the rather prim Mrs. Hughes from Downton Abbey.   

Even Downton abbey fans were amazed at the real Phyllis Logan and her character from that series, and the Lovejoy series started a good 25 years prior.

Whatever Lady Jane, / Mrs. Hughes / Phyllis takes, she should bottle it.

 

So, return to England of almost 4 decades ago, when it still was a free country, and most of scoundrels were everyday people not their own government.  Lovejoy’s is mostly a slow-paced world, except when he is on the lam – often hunkered down in the sidecar of Eric’s two-seater motorcycle, or running away from or after hoaxers in “Miriam,” really a Morris Minor 1000 convertible, circa 1969.

Not to miss for those who appreciate wit, humor, and roguish fun. Antique lovers ae invited, too, but it is not required for admission to this delight.  Maybe those not already afflicted with “antique pox” will catch it after the series works its spell.

–Kathy Borich
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Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

One of the best food episodes on Lovejoy is “Bin Divers,” where Lovejoy gets into a dispute with a garbageman over the pickings from so called trash. 

Well, actually it is Eric, who is turning from a heavy metal listening gofer to a semi conman antiques dealer himself.  He begins picking through the contents of trash to find that one pearl, and that infringes upon Sam Nunn, who already has that game locked down. 

In fact, Sam often sells these overlooked little gems from the trash to Lovejoy himself.  To mend the breach Eric has caused, Lovejoy visits Sam at his house, which is filled with exquisite antiques gleaned from the trash.

[On a side note, my husband and I have been bin divers a bit, too.  When Gary worked for the city of Chicago collecting throwaways, he collected enough broken down bikes to put the best pieces together for his nephews.

And I once tried to salvage a whole class set of a Shakespeare plays not in our texts that I had carefully xeroxed.  They had mistakenly been put in the recycling bin by earnest student volunteers trying to save the planet.   However, even with my classroom aid holding my feet as I tried to dig down in the pile, it was to no avail. They were gone, gone, gone.]

Our English bin diver is not just an antique aficionado, but a gourmet as well.  He is putting the finishing touches on Poulet et morel a la Normande, or chicken, toadstool, and cream, as he explains to Lovejoy. (Morels are the French word for mushrooms, not eel, as once happened to a very discombobulated Hercule Poirot. 

I often made the lazy cook’s version of the same, gleaned from the Betty Crocker Cookbook circa 1968 that I got at my wedding shower.  Thinking about it, that cookbook and the recipe are almost antiques now, too, as is Different Drummer herself – maybe.

Here is the link to the real French Recipe, but I will show you my simpler version that I tweaked from Betty Crocker. It also appears in my Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook .

Chicken Parisian

Ingredients 

  • 3-ounces fresh black truffles, wiped clean, and thinly sliced

  • (or Portobello or other mushrooms of your choice)

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

  • 1 teaspoon mined garlic

  • 4 to 6 medium chicken breasts

  • 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup

  • 1 cup dairy sour cream

  • 1/2 cup Madeira or dry sherry

  • paprika

Directions

Place the chicken breasts, skin side up, in an 11x 7 x 11/2 inch baking dish. Sauté the truffle or mushroom slices in the olive oil with the minced garlic until tender. Combine with the other ingredients and pour over the chicken. Sprinkle generously with paprika. Bake at 350 about 1 to 1 1/4 hours or till tender. Serve with hot fluffy rice.

From Different Drummer’s own Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook.