The third series of the Power Game occasionally stalled, as this comedic episode demonstrates. Its conceit is to restrict the action to two boozy drinks parties one Sunday, during which Kane and Wilder butt up against each other like two stags competing for supremacy, each trying to secure a contract for a solar energy power station (a technology forty years ahead of its time, we need it now, guys!) for their preferred bidders.
There are some marvellous highlights along the way. A couple of camp CIA men appear and disappear. Dowling makes progress in his seduction of Lady Pamela. Sir Jason, who had become ineffective to the point of invisibility in previous weeks, unable even to put on a show of controlling Dowling, suddenly bursts forth with a self-pitying stream of consciousness. There are some hilarious, if irrelevant, cameos from Kenneth Keeling as a drunken guest and Anne Jameson as socialite Mirabelle Wentworth.
But at the end of it all, it's not clear what the viewer has got out of all the intrigue, or even what all the intrigue was for. Had Wilder and Kane simply told each other what their intentions were and why right at the beginning of the programme, everything could have been sorted out before the first commercial break.
There are some marvellous highlights along the way. A couple of camp CIA men appear and disappear. Dowling makes progress in his seduction of Lady Pamela. Sir Jason, who had become ineffective to the point of invisibility in previous weeks, unable even to put on a show of controlling Dowling, suddenly bursts forth with a self-pitying stream of consciousness. There are some hilarious, if irrelevant, cameos from Kenneth Keeling as a drunken guest and Anne Jameson as socialite Mirabelle Wentworth.
But at the end of it all, it's not clear what the viewer has got out of all the intrigue, or even what all the intrigue was for. Had Wilder and Kane simply told each other what their intentions were and why right at the beginning of the programme, everything could have been sorted out before the first commercial break.