Main cast: David Webb (Clive), Noni Hazlehurst (Anne Martin), Matilda Brown (Fiona), Treffyn Koreshoff (John), and Bryan Brown (The Host)
Director: Ian Gilmour

David and Anne were once glorious dancing partners as well as husband and wife… but now, they are divorced with David having custody of the children only on weekends. In this episode, Anne drops the kids off to their father, and there is a catcher: she is planning to move with her new man, and she will be bringing the kids with him. And… yeah, that’s about it.

Dancing Partners sometimes tease that it may serve up something supernatural, but in the end, it’s just a sad, mundane drama about an unlikable, out-of-touch, not-quite-together man that still yearns for his past glory and dreams of making his eldest daughter a dancer so that he can relive his glory days through her. What his daughter wants is, of course, irrelevant to his desires. His wife is portrayed as a loud, shrill, and unlikable shrew. To be fair, David is so useless that he doesn’t pay child support or contribute to the parenting of his kids, and he has zero consideration for other people, so maybe I can’t blame her for being that way with her ex-husband.

At any rate, I finish this episode feeling sorry for the kids. That and it’s a shame that the two adults are divorced, because they deserve to make one another miserable and spare other people from their amorous attentions.

Anyway, I’m giving this episode three oogies because, all things considered, it is a well-paced and well-crafted episode that stands out compared to some of the early lackluster episodes of this series. Still, though, the adults are so whacked in the head that it is hard to muster any sympathy for either of them.