Duty Free

- Season 1

(1984)

David and Amy Pearce arrive in Spain for their 'second honeymoon',using David's redundancy pay. Things start badly for David when his suitcase breaks and he finds Amy has forgotten to pack any of his shoes but there is compensation when he meets Linda Cochran,on vacation with dull husband Robert,who complains about everything and hates foreign holidays. Amy,however,is displeased with David's attempts to impress Linda and takes steps to,literally, dampen his enthusiasm.

Amy and Robert do not share their spouses' enthusiasm for a trip to see the famous matador El Macho in action. After the fight, David's pretentious efforts to impress Linda by claiming he is a bullfighting expert are punctured by the arrival of El Macho, and David is further humiliated by his failure to support Amy's spirited attack on blood sports. The humiliation continues back at the hotel when he rushes to the aid of Linda, who reports a prowler on her balcony, prompting a definite response from Amy.

Amy is scornful of Linda's yoga exercises and David's attempts to impress her by keeping fit,which land him in bed with a bad back. Anxious to prove to Linda that he is unharmed and healthy,he again incurs the wrath of Amy,who throws half of his only pair of shoes over the balcony to prevent him from meeting Linda,whom Amy likens to the praying mantis on the bedroom wall.

The couples join a coach trip to the mountains, where David buys Linda a gypsy shawl she has admired, but when Amy finds she has lost her money, he sells his watch. Noticing the shawl on Linda and the watch not on David, arouses Amy's suspicions, causing David to claim that the shawl was actually for his wife. When Robert buys Linda another shawl and David feels the need to buy one also as compensation for Linda, David passes off the surplus shawl as a gift for Amy's mother, but Amy isn't convinced and takes artistic revenge on David that leads to trouble in a German ...

After Amy learns that they had a moonlight swim together, Linda and David must find new ways to meet, so Linda devises a system involving towels on her balcony to telegraph to David when it is safe to come up to her room. Robert now knows that his wife has a lover but suspects an innocent Frenchman. Amy, on the other hand, knows precisely what is going on and switches the towels to land David in trouble with a German couple.

David refuses to go with Amy to visit the ruins, saying he already booked a court to play tennis with Linda. Robert still does not suspect, though he looks down on David anyway, seeing him as a social-security scrounger holidaying at taxpayers' expense. With Amy off to the ruins and Robert on the golf course, the loved-up couple move from the tennis court to the bedroom to indulge in a little afternoon delight. But Amy walks in while they're kissing and takes her revenge with hot tea and sticky cakes.

Their affair now out in the open, David and Linda plan to run off together. Robert wants to fight David, but Amy uses subtler means: filling her husband's suitcase with hotel property to get him arrested, then persuading Linda that she had a lucky escape as he is a notorious kleptomaniac known as The Weasel. While Linda happily returns to Robert, Amy--though she has squared things with the police, fails to tell David, subjecting him to further humiliation as he tries to flee the hotel in drag.