The Last Panthers

In a tense opening scene, a well-executed diamond heist is underway.  Disregarding the alarm they know will be pressed, the gang pour pink paint over the manager with the combination to the safe (Pink Panthers!) and make it out in the allotted time.  Instead of the usual foot-to-the-floor getaway car, they pound the pavements, having hamstrung the police vehicles with a ring of fire.  Then things start to go a bit wrong, for the gang and for the drama.

It takes them an age to discard their conspicuous white boiler suits, leading one of them to accidentally shoot a child while aiming fire at police.  He then rather unbelievably escapes across a piece of open ground, when a few seconds earlier several policemen, presumably armed since they are in Marseilles, were in hot pursuit.  Though the gang evade capture, their buyer/fence doesn't want to be implicated in a murder and they are forced to try to sell the goods elsewhere.  This turns out to be somewhere in the vicinity of Belgrade, in a shanty town that even hardened criminals would probably eschew in favour of a prison cell.  That they make it out of here alive is thanks to Milan (Goran Bogdan) who has a panther tattooed on his chest, a man who used to be known as 'Animal' and who is about to find that criminal fraternity is a myth.

While this is going on, diamond heist specialist Naomi (Samantha Morton) and her insurance boss Tom who, as played by John Hurt, is surely well past retirement, arrive to check out the scene of the crime and trace the diamonds, quickly clashing with the irritated cops, led by Khalil (Tahar Rahim) who are themselves investigating.  Tom and Naomi soon follow the trail to Belgrade, which is the cue for her flashbacks to the Balkans conflict in what are very cliched and badly-done CGI clips of her in uniform.  By the end of the episode, she too has only narrowly escaped with her life.

We differed in opinion a bit on this one, with Dan liking it more than Ali, but then he is more of a fan of those violent 1970s French heist thrillers, and more recent ones like 'A Prophet'.  This owes something to them, and thankfully uses subtitles rather than English actors speaking in accents, but the tone is somewhat uneven, and whether there is action enough for all the episodes without spilling over into total implausibility, we shall have to wait and see.  Plus, it must be said, we have nothing against beards per se, but one hirsute man is rather too much like another to immediately identify our cops and robbers, so a shave or two wouldn't go amiss.

Cider With Rosie

If you liked 'Lark Rise to Candleford', then you'll love this....  Well, ok, they're at least not spinning this out to a twee Sunday evening staple, but we did wonder why this rite-of-passage memoir was part of the short 'literary classics' series rather than a Boxing Day special.

It was a solid, if episodic, adaptation of the much-loved book, with Samantha Morton holding things together nicely as Laurie's long-suffering mother.  A voice-over by Timothy Spall as the older Lee gave viewers a taste of the lyrical prose which would otherwise have been lost and there was enough nostalgia for the chocolate boxers in the form of rolling hills and meadows, quaint print frocks and the sort of ramshackle country cottage that would nowadays fetch a cool million.  There was also enough grit left to appease the anti-chocolate box brigade, with a child's death, a murder, a war deserter and a father who behaved like Lord Marchmain in 'Brideshead' in refusing to return to his family after WWI (with less obvious cause).

For us, though, it was probably most memorable for the astonishingly brief cameo appearances of Annette Crosbie and June Whitfield as the warring grandmothers, and the inclusion of two young actors who are the offspring of... two actors.  Neither was a bad performance, but there are concerns about the accessibility of the profession to those without privilege, with the likes of David Morrissey and Christopher Eccleston raising doubts as to whether their current counterparts, starting out, would be able to make a living at it.  By 'privilege' they may be referring to the likes of Eddie Redmayne and Ben Cumberbatch, products of Eton and Harrow, who could no doubt have afforded to rest indefinitely between jobs even before becoming successful.  Aren't the ranks of actors, we would argue, equally homogenised by keeping it in the family?