The BEST episodes of Minder
Every episode of Minder ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Minder!
This comedy drama series featured Terry McCann, a former boxer with a conviction for G.B.H., and Arthur Daley, a second-hand car dealer with an eye for a nice little earner. Alongside his many business ventures, Arthur would regularly hire Terry out as a minder or bodyguard.
#1 - Too Many Crooks
Season 8 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/7/1991
Gangland boss Billy Meadows comes to London from Birmingham for a meet with his estranged brother Vinnie to locate Henri, a French chef who has got his daughter pregnant. Henri is working for 'Daley Catering' who are about to cater for a police retirement party. He is kidnapped and returned to Birmingham for a shot-gun wedding, but all’s not well with Arthur. A police Superintendent at the party is admitted to hospital with possible food poisoning.
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#2 - The Greatest Show in Willesden
Season 8 - Episode 9 - Aired 10/31/1991
Arthur and Monty Hinchcliffe book a former music hall act for the “British Volunteer” - retired ventriloquist 'Professor Pickford and Mystic Micky'. The act goes down well with the punters - but Tommy Pickford suffers from heart trouble and can't continue the act every night. Then some karaoke gear that Arthur's rented from Mrs Gabadini is stolen from his van. He sees dire consequences from admitting it's loss to Mrs Gabadini and her sons, but then Ray strikes lucky. He does a deal with dodgy wheeler-dealer club owner Barry to sell the karaoke machine, which he stole, to the Gabadinis.
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#3 - The Cruel Canal
Season 8 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/25/1991
When Ray's van breaks down whilst delivering two hundred video recorders to a client in Limehouse Arthur needs alternative transport - and fast, especially as he learns they were stolen property and psychotic Big Dai wants them back. His answer is to take them by barge, the ancient 'Persephone', a journey which inevitably ends in disaster and some very wet video recorders.
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#4 - The Long Good Thursday
Season 10 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/10/1994
Café owner Luigi is opening a mafia-themed restaurant, the ‘Cosa Noshtra’ with Arthur’s financial backing. On the evening before the grand opening, ‘Cranky Frankie’ Connor escapes from prison and holds Arthur at gunpoint in his lockup. He demands to see Rosie, his wife, whom he suspects of having an affair with Luigi. Luigi’s wife Carla also has her suspicions.
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#5 - On the Autofront
Season 10 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/24/1994
A price war has erupted and the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between Daley Motors and the former owner of a nearby car dealership is violated after moneylender Don Gedley takes over. Arthur attempts to increase business by radio advertising, but can only afford to use amateur announcers on a local pirate radio station. Grant Gedley, a thrusting young executive determined to prove himself to his father, tries to sabotage Arthur by setting him up with police on hit-and-run charges. Anxious to keep the peace and equally anxious to keep his son out of trouble, Don proposes that Arthur pleads guilty to all charges, in return for paying his fine. But Grant won’t cooperate and violence is the result.
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#6 - The Great Depression of 1994
Season 10 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/17/1994
Ray’s Uncle Brian is suffering from what appears to be deep depression and won’t talk to anyone about it. Arthur seeks advice from a successful businessman who suffers similarly but has managed to live with it. Meanwhile, he sells a car to a punter, a retired Detective Inspector, who also suffers from depression since being dismissed for corruption. The man returns to the Winchester, on which site the house he was born in once stood, locks himself in the toilet and refuses to come out.
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#7 - All Quiet on the West End Front
Season 10 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/10/1994
Arthur takes over a booth at a Business Expo, and sets up as a provider of services to busy executives – West End theatre visits, casinos, hard-to-get tickets for booked out shows etc. The initial attempt is a disaster, but another one goes fairly well with satisfied customers. This arouses the ire of another whose ideas he’s pinched. Ray is drawn into a fight with a hyperactive casino owner and also tries unsuccessfully to romance the Expo manageress. This arouses the jealousy of his current girlfriend, a jazz singer.
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#8 - A Taste of Money
Season 9 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/25/1993
Expecting a massive windfall from his unknown Australian relative, Arthur prepares to fly to Sydney with Ray. On arrival, they are met by Bill McCabe and booked into an expensive hotel. At the lawyers office, they discover that there are several claimants to the estate of great-uncle Joshua Daley. Arthur and Ray visit the Daley estate; Paradise Springs; a largely derelict homestead on several thousand acres of outback land - land that’s potentially valuable for grazing and possibly mineral rights.
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#9 - Last Orders at the Winchester
Season 9 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/4/1993
To celebrate Dave’s 25 years at the Winchester, Arthur offers to get the club redecorated. He gives the job to “Heart Attack” – but the latter promptly breaks through a bearing wall and the club is forced to close down. To raise the money for repairs, Arthur organises a fundraiser football match, refereed by DS Morley. Then ‘Heart Attack’, who’d vanished, reappears and hands over the money for the repairs, which he’s stolen from Vic, a rival club owner. To allay police suspicions, an auction is held in order to ‘launder’ the money.
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#10 - The Roof of all Evil
Season 9 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/25/1993
Seeing the fashion for television satellite dishes, Arthur employs Logie Lawson, a self-trained electronics ‘expert’ to install ex-East German army dishes – but the instructions are all in German and they mess up their first job. They get an order to install one on the house of ‘Fingers’ Rossetti, who has a very bad reputation and a very short temper. The installation goes badly wrong and both Arthur and Logie, who has a fear of heights, are stranded on the roof.
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#11 - Gone with the Winchester
Season 9 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/11/1993
Toby ‘Jug’ Johnson is released from prison after many years and a drunken reunion begins at the Winchester between him, Arthur and Dave, who were members of the same gang in their youth, the ‘Brentford Backhanders’. Arthur begins to suspect that Dave is setting up a rival business with another gang member and they fall out. So Arthur starts a rival club and a price war erupts. Ray is eventually able to arrange a mediation and peace is restored.
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#12 - The Coach That Came in from the Cold
Season 8 - Episode 12 - Aired 11/21/1991
DS Morley is ordered to sell a police bus to Arthur so that their accounts will balance. The latter starts using it for tourist purposes; taking punters through “The London The Tourist Never Sees”. The bus breaks down and the whole tour ends up at the Winchester. They become spectators at a fight between Denny Willis and Ray, which pleases them greatly and they are satisfied to have had their money’s worth. In the meantime, Arthur’s trying to join an exclusive golf club and Ray discovers that the current captain has an underhand scheme to sell the club’s land for executive apartments.
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#13 - For a Few Dollars More
Season 9 - Episode 13 - Aired 4/1/1993
Marooned in Sydney and unable to pay their hotel bills or airfares home, Ray and Arthur move into a cheap backpackers hostel. Ray gets some bar work and Arthur falls in with Collins, a small-time street dealer and receiver of stolen goods whose methods he is very familiar with. He starts street trading and makes some money, but the police soon catch up with him. Glad to see the back of him, they give him forty-eight hours to leave Australia. Then businessman Reid mistakes Arthur for a big-time drug smuggler, and gives him twenty-four hours to get out of town.
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#14 - You Need Hands
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/20/1982
Terry Gives Des a hand collecting a debt but gets his hand broken in a fight just when Arthur has a special job lined up so he has to hire another minder but unknown to Arthur the job involves drugs so Terry and Des come to the rescue.
#15 - Bring Me the Head of Arthur Daley
Season 10 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/3/1994
Violent bank robber Charlie Knowles, a life prisoner, has decided to get even with his former partners who all received lighter sentences. Phelan, his former quartermaster and ‘outside man’ sets them all up and they get extra jail time. Arthur, who sold him the getaway car that broke down and allowed police to arrest them, is set up on dangerous driving charges and cops a sentence of 100 hours community service. Despite the evidence, DS Rogerson isn’t convinced of Arthur’s guilt and Ray helps him to expose the set-up. It emerges that Phelan, who originally ‘cooperated’ with police, also double-crossed Knowles. Phelan is arrested, but Knowles dies in prison.
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#16 - The Son Also Rises
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 3/3/1982
When a school boy is terrorised by local thugs, his mother hires Terry to protect him. It turns out that the thugs have been hired by his father's ex partner, who is just out of jail and has been cheated out of his promised windfall.
#17 - A Lot of Bull and a Pat on the Back
Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired 12/4/1980
Terry and Arthur are hired to move a bull from it's field to the owners new farm. Later they discover that they have stolen the bull, so they decide to find the men who hired them and get the bull returned to the rightful owner. Terry is also hired by his stripper girl friend to discourage a stalker.
#18 - Him Indoors
Season 8 - Episode 8 - Aired 10/24/1991
Arthur sets himself up as a 'security consultant', selling security alarms to business premises. He recruits Ron the Burglar, a reformed burglar, for his hard-won expertise, but when Ron installs a system on Arthur's lock-up, it immediately malfunctions. Arthur is unable to leave the premises and he's forced to stay there all night. A series of break-ins at premises that have installed Arthur's equipment soon arouse the suspicions of the police and Morley and Park investigate.
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#19 - One Flew Over the Parents' Nest
Season 10 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/27/1994
Whilst his parents are on holiday in Spain, Ray, driving Bert’s taxi, picks up Susie, an attractive girl who claims to be on the run from a violent husband. Arthur, scenting a ‘nice little earner’, installs her in Bert and Doreen’s house.
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#20 - The Great Trilby
Season 9 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/18/1993
A private detective, Bill McCabe, arrives from Australia to investigate a claim that Arthur is heir to a fortune left by an distant relative who’s died intestate. Ray and Arthur carry out some genealogical research at the Family Records Centre (then located at St. Catherine’s House and now merged with the National Archives), and also search parish records. They finally locate what appears to be clinching evidence of Arthur’s claim to be the last surviving descendant of the deceased’s family. But the Will requires the inheritor to be ‘of good character’, and Arthur has just been charged with unauthorised use of parking infringement notices (which are also forged).
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#21 - How to Succeed in Business without Really Retiring
Season 9 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/18/1993
Arthur decides to retire and leaves Ray in charge. He is initially successful, computerising the records and expanding business, but he doesn’t have Arthur’s hard-won knowledge of people and their habits. Ray falls victim to a sting operation involving jewellery and Arthur, who’s become bored with retirement anyway, returns to the business to sort out the mess.
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#22 - Second Hand Pose
Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/3/1984
When due to mix up ,Terry is left in a large industrial meat freezer, he decides to go his own way, and gets work helping out an old friend who is in the second hand furniture business.
#23 - A Well Fashioned Fit-Up
Season 4 - Episode 11 - Aired 3/21/1984
When Arthur tries to sell some fake dresses to a fashion agent, he refuses, but offers Terry a job guarding his warehouse, but Terry has already promised a pub owner that he will work for him, so Arthur stands in for him.
#24 - Caught in the Act, Fact
Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 11/27/1980
Terry help's out Des into delivering a car that that has been used in a robbery. The police pick up Terry when they find his fingerprints on the car but Arthur provides an alibi and he is released. Terry also minds a magistrate who is a shoplifter.
#25 - Dead Men Do Tell Tales
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/13/1982
A crooked travel agent , Monte Wiseman gets Arthur and Terry to pick up a coffin at the airport and store it at the lock up. But when the coroner needs to perform an autopsy, Monte moves it from the lock up and despite Arthur's objections stores it at Terry's flat.