Just Good Friends Episode Rating Graph

To her mother's annoyance Penny moves into the newly decorated flat with Vince but disaster soon strikes as, due to Penny not locking the door, the flat is burgled and vandalized. A horrified Penny tells Vince she has finished with him and moves back with her parents but when they are away for the weekend Vince turns up with good news and she has him back as they spend the night together.

Penny is summoned to a meeting at a restaurant with Graham, her controlling, patronizing estranged husband. He tells her that he wants her to admit to adultery with Vince to lessen the shame of a divorce - otherwise his mother will exclude him from her will. Fortunately Vince arrives to rescue Penny, and he has a plan - and reinforcements.

Penny hopes Vince will ring her so that she can tell him she never wants to see him again but when he fails to call she goes to his betting shop on the pretext of nervously placing a bet. Vince suggests a night out and collects her in his car where, encouraged by her friend Elaine on how to take revenge on a cheating lover she destroys his credit cards - unaware that his friends are in the back seat watching. At least her bet turns out to be a winner and Vince flatters her by remembering their first date.

Some months have elapsed and Gina is attempting to obtain details of Vince's new wine importing business, run in conjunction with Les's Portuguese vineyard, as part of her divorce settlement. Back in London Penny meets up with Vince, who employs Norman as his head of sales though Daphne does not share her husband's delight since Vince caused her to faint in the street. Penny is also unhappy when Vince crashes his car into hers but then he does make up for it by proposing.

Penny returns to work in London and is irate to learn that Vince has been married - though not especially happily - for a while but omitted to tell her in Paris. Invited to his flat she decides to take revenge by cutting up his clothes - only to find that the flat and the clothes belong to somebody else.

In a feature length episode Penny recalls how she first met Vince when he was selling ice creams from a van, their subsequent courtship and the events that led up to his jilting her on her wedding day and her decision to marry respectable but controlling Graham. Consequently she comes down on the side of believing that she and Vince have no future together.

Vince tricks Penny into going away on a week's holiday at his family's new Portuguese villa.

Five years earlier high-flying secretary Penny Warrender was due to marry bookie Vince Pinner but he jilted her at the altar. Penny has since had a disastrous marriage to Graham and is divorced whilst Vince is still single. By chance both are in the same pub with their new dates, neither of which are suitable, and Penny and Vince meet up by the cigarette machine. She is still angry, he attempts to calm her down. They realize that they cold get back together though maybe as just good friends.

After getting her divorce Penny meets Vince for lunch and he proposes to her, though given his past record she is wary. Furthermore she has the offer of a training course in Paris, so that when he stays out all night, despite having a good reason, she decides that she is better off without him and must put herself first in future, accepting the Paris course

Vince realizes how much he wants to get back with Penny and decides to brave a visit to her house to supposedly return her handkerchief, knowing that he will not exactly be welcome with her parents. This is an understatement as he has to run the gauntlet with Penny's imperious mother Daphne, who lets him know how she has always felt about him and how she has always believed that Penny was too good for him.

Penny is alarmed when she appears to have pregnancy symptoms and, whilst Vince's parents are delighted to think they may have a grandchild, Daphne is anything but, giving her daughter a cautionary tale of a former friend in a similar predicament. Vince agrees to stand by her though ultimately it turns out to be a false alarm.

Things go badly in the divorce court for Vince, with Gina's solicitor vilifying him and a feminist judge giving her control of most of Vince's businesses, including the wine importers - though Norman's job is safe. He does however hold onto the most lucrative - the scrapyard. In Portugal things are no better for Les, who discovers that the three German tanks Vince bought and sold are now aiding a revolution in Africa.

Having heard that Penny is back from Paris Vince's wife, the elegant but highly unpleasant Georgina, comes to her office, posing as a client, and summons her to a meeting with herself and Vince. Georgina recognizes that Penny still loves Vince and admits that she only married him for his money. Later Vince confesses to Penny that Georgina trapped him into marriage by feigning pregnancy and says that he intends to leave her. Penny is immensely relieved when she sees him indeed walking out on his wife to stay with his parents.

Two years have passed. Penny, now in a good job in Paris, meets Vince, who has taken over his father's scrap business, at the top of the Eiffel tower as agreed on their last meeting. They return to her flat where inevitably one thing leads to another. Back in England Norman has been made redundant and Daphne is doing her best to keep the news from Vince's mother Rita.