[1] It was created by Jim Hill and Bill Stair, and it starred Michael Elphick, David Daker, Neil Morrissey, Elizabeth Carling, Amanda Burton, Saskia Wickham, Rachel Davies, Lesley-Anne Sharpe and Brigit Forsyth.
They are assisted by a number of characters, including Rocky Cassidy (Morrissey), Laura Marsh (Carling), Margaret Daly (Burton), Alex Wilton (Wickham), Doreen Evans (Davies), Debbie Yates (Sharpe) and Helen Yeldman (Forsyth).
Much of the first series sees Ken offering his services for odd jobs as a means of supplementing his finances towards the funding of The Ponderossa, a market garden which he has set up in a village ten miles outside of Birmingham.
After finding himself invalided from the fire service when his lungs were damaged while rescuing a young boy during a blaze, Ken Boon buys a plot that he calls The Ponderossa and tries to make a living as a market gardener.
His manager Peter Grant (Brendan Price) hires Ken to act as his minder and prevent him from drinking, as he is keen to sign Billy up for a Saudi Arabian football team.
Meanwhile, Harry is keen to sell the Grand and move to a larger hotel, whilst Doreen is preparing to leave them after accepting a new job running a friend's bar in Spain.
During the ensuing episodes, Ken and Rocky are involved in wide range of situations whilst out delivering packages, from clashing with unscrupulous property developers to unwittingly assisting credit card smugglers and uncovering smuggling rings.
Harry also has his share of issues to deal with as he tries to run the hotel, including experiencing a police raid after a pornographic film unit utilizes his premises, reported incidents of food poisoning among some guests, mislaying a large cache of money and a theft at an Irish gypsy wedding.
An elderly farmer, Irene Maplethorpe (Phylis Calvert), who runs Moat Farm, starts to get targeted when she finds dead sheep in the trough, escaped cattle in the fields and a flooded farmyard.
A local consortium of crooked property developers, Rathbone, Keen and Blackwater (RKB), are interested in forcing Maplethorpe to sell her land so they can build luxury flats onsite; it later turns out they were behind the attacks.
She brings along her Spanish boyfriend, Luis Perez (Tony Slattery), who turns out to owe money to an unscrupulous wine dealer, Teddy Rawlingston (Christopher Benjamin).
Later, whilst Ken is on the lookout for Richard Jay, a businessman who has robbed the proceeds from a charity event he was organizing with Harry, he is reunited with Margaret, who left the police force due to disciplinary action following the hostage situation at the end of the previous series.
Several months have passed since the hostage incident, and Harry has since sold the hotel and purchased a ballroom called the Plaza Suite; he has taken Linda and Glynis with him to assist with the management of the venue.
She is alerted when one of the gardeners Trevor (Mark Haddigan) states that his colleague Ray (John Pythian) has disappeared after witnessing Pettifer passing on huge bundles of cash to some fellow criminals during a meeting at his house.
Meanwhile, at the Plaza, Harry is approached by Jim Hargreaves (John Taylor), a former colleague from the fire brigade who wants to organize a fundraising event for the League of Absent Friends (LOAF).
Ken is hired by local shop owner Elspeth Bowman (Patricia Hayes) to ensure her son Cecil (Richard O'Callaghan) keeps out of trouble after he is released from prison.
Meanwhile, Rocky's powers of observation are put to the test when Margaret and Jo train him to remember forty objects on a tray, whilst Harry finds the Plaza Suite plagued with mice and has to close the venue for deep cleaning.
His cases include tracking down an army deserter who has got involved in illegal boxing, acting as minder for a wayward local radio DJ who has a tendency for booze, investigating a meatpacking factory that doubles as a smuggling front, uncovering an insurance scam involving a sterile racing horse whose medical certificate was forged, and bringing to justice a crooked casino owner who uses dodgy business practices including blackmail and subterfuge to put a rival gambling club out of business.
He has grandiose plans to turn it into a renowned venue for sporting tournaments, including polo, tennis and golf, along with hosting themed evenings, stand-up comedy nights and organizing meetings for various clubs and organisations.
Meanwhile, Harry has sold the Plaza Suite and has gone into partnership with widow Helen Yeldman; they jointly run Woodcote Park, a hotel and country club in the Nottinghamshire countryside.
Ken later uncovers a scheme organized by the owner Mr Sanford (Leslie Sands) and his son Trevor (Simon Chandler): they accept mysterious late-night deliveries from Amsterdam that do not go through the books.
Meanwhile, Harry is planning on selling his co-ownership of Woodcote Park in order to take over Hugo's, a nightclub and disco, but he soon receives a frosty reception by his business rival Vic Carpenter (Andrew McCulloch), who also wants to purchase the club.
Ken discovers a web of deception that involves Willie's manager Bob Bennet (Donald Gee) and his new girlfriend Belinda (Rachel Fielding), who are plotting to defraud him over the sale of a house.
The following night, the crypt is flooded, and Bannerman goes on his word, cancels the contract and passes the security operations onto Jack Fentiman (Derek Fowlds), a rival of Harry's.
The restoration of Ken's cottage continues to be an ongoing theme throughout the course of this series, but he is continuously beset with setbacks when he finds himself inundated with cases, ranging from dealing with a pair of drugs traffickers who steal drugs from the local hospital, bringing to justice a corrupt landlord who uses unscrupulous tactics to force out his tenants in return for a lucrative property deal, finding himself in the middle of an ongoing quarrel between the local gentry and a sheep farmer over land rights, investigating a lawyer who used deceitful tricks in order to successfully push through a libel case and protecting a family from a vengeful ex-convict who demands his rightful share of the proceeds from an earlier robbery.
There are also significant development for Harry in this series, from being suspected by the police of getting himself and others involved in a dodgy property scheme, to masquerading as a private detective to investigate the robbery of a priceless piece of porcelain.
Rocky is also given more to do in this series; at one point he is suspected of stealing jewelry from the company's safe and resigns in disgust, inadvertently leading to a strike over the security workers who protest over his 'unfair dismissal'.
Meanwhile, Rocky has been acting very strangely; he has sold his motorbike for a car and has repeatedly failed to turn up for work, all due to the fact he is fallen in love with Melanie King (Debra Beaumont), a cashier at the bank.
Things start to go awry for Ken when he receives strange phone calls during the night and later discovers that the office has been broken into and his records on the Pryall case have been stolen.
Held off from transmission since it was made in 1992, it contains no references to Ken's developing romantic relationship with Alex or Harry's resignation from CBS at the end of the respective series, which sets this episode before the events of 'Shot in the Dark'.