Season 1, Episode 3

Introducing Andrew Birch.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Sorry, Corky!

Oh, dear.

I will be sad if Roper’s “little friend” goes. Frisky and Tabby are incapable of verbal repartee, and Sandy Langbourne — a character so real that you just want to smack him right through the TV screen — is just an old, snarly, red-faced thing. Just to run with the image Corky left in our heads, had Sandy been Belgian, one can too well picture his great-grandfather in the Congo Free State, chopping off hands, while Corky’s own great-grandfather poured drinks and emitted biting phrases.

But let’s move on.

What is it that makes a bad guy like Langbourne so heinous, and a villain like Roper so charming? The cleverness, of course, the rolling voice and dashes of humor. But there’s also something more: a suggestion of some sort of vulnerability. Not necessarily a nice vulnerability, but a chink in the armor, some genuine human feeling — attractive or not — displayed in this episode; for example, when Roper loses his cool with Jed on the phone, speaking about the young boy that his money has been supporting. (Bank statements wouldn’t, in fact, fill in all the blanks in that story, but the poorly hidden photo in the night-table drawer helps.)

It’s a nice moment when Roper blurts out far too much — “I’m paying money to raise another man’s kid. I know that!” — realizes it — “… and now anyone listening to this phone call knows it, too” — and slips quickly back into the dapper English reserve that sugarcoats his secret dealings — “Apart from that, how was your day?”

I feel we’re meant to summon sympathy for Jed, and I wish I could, but I find it challenging. I’m tired of the way she drapes herself about, dressing and undressing, teasing poor Jonathan, who’s back in another of his perfect blue linen shirts and ready for love, or something like it.